- Editor:
- Stephen N. Spencer,
- Program Chairs:
- Drew Davidson,
- Tracy Fullerton,
- Karen Schrier
We are very excited to introduce the papers and panels for the fourth annual Sandbox Symposium, which is now the Game Papers track of the SIGGRAPH conference! This is our third year of printed proceedings, which features an innovative blend of papers on topics such as kinesthetics and movement, user interface design, persuasive games, and programming techniques and tools. We had over 80 high-quality submissions and chose 20 papers to be presented at the conference.
Additions this year include a social game that involves business card swapping; an onsite GameJam!, or 24-hour game design competition; IndieCade, an exhibit of independent game development; and Real-Time Rendering, a series of live demos of video games and real-time simulations. There are also two game development courses: Advances in Real-Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games I and II. And finally, Will Wright, game designer and creator of Spore and The Sims, is providing the Tuesday keynote address of the conference, "Playing with Perception."
This year's Game Papers track features papers on both the theoretical and practical aspects of game development and design, and includes proofs of concept, case studies, critiques and explorations. The authors of these papers show a diversity of expertise and breadth of experiences that echoes the games community itself. They come from both academia and industry, or bridge the gap between; they have backgrounds in literature, pedagogy, health, physics, art history, cinematography, design, ecology, activism, programming and psychology. Many submissions this year centered on supporting physical movement through play and on the intersection between the real and virtual, suggesting that the definition of games and what games can do is growing and expanding. We hope to continue to serve as a site of scholarship on all aspects of games-practice, theory, design and participation.
The first paper session, on Tuesday morning, is "Supporting Social and Persuasive Play," which presents four papers that highlight games that aim to persuade, raise awareness, and educate through participatory game play. Tuesday afternoon's paper session, "Game Mechanics and Design Projects" brings together four papers that describe design and prototyping principles and techniques for games and social networking.
Wednesday morning's "Kinesthetic Movement in Games I" features papers that describe how to design and analyze game interfaces to better support virtual and physical game experiences.
The two curated panels feature game designers, thinkers and researchers in a moderated discussion on cutting edge issues in the fields. Wednesday's panel, "Instigating Change: Models for Positive Games" is a discussion of games that entertain and also have unique positive social aspects that can empower forms of critical play and encourage people to take positive action. Thursday's panel, "The Art History of Games," explores ideas surrounding games as an art form, the role of technology in the development of game and the relationship among games, the established art world, "fine art" forms, and the cultural traditions of art. Please note that there are three other games-focused panels as well, "Getting a Job in CG for Entertainment," "Keeping a Job in CG for Entertainment" and "Simulated Physics in Games."
Thursday morning's paper session, "Kinesthetic Movement in Games II" reveal insights into game mechanics and play for games with real, virtual and potentially physical components. The final paper session, Thursday afternoon's "3-D and the Cinematic in Games" brings together four papers on cutting-edge cinematography, lighting, and fluid simulation techniques in game development. other panels as well, "Getting a Job in CG for Entertainment," "Keeping a Job in CG for Entertainment" and "Simulated Physics in Games."
Proceeding Downloads
Designing history: the path to participation nation
This paper describes the iterative design process of a cross media learning environment for high school students, the heart of which is an online collectible card game centered on U.S. Constitutional issues. The method of design and iterative process ...
Societal impact of a serious game on raising public awareness: the case of FloodSim
This paper presents an evaluation of the societal impact of a simulation-based Serious Game. FloodSim was developed with the aim of raising awareness of issues surrounding flooding policy and citizen engagement in the UK. The game was played by a large ...
Using influence and persuasion to shape player experiences
In this paper we present a pilot study on the use of influence to guide player behavior in an interactive storytelling environment. We discuss the need for authoring support in drama management systems and present computational models of influence as a ...
Game design strategies for collectivist persuasion
A fundamental feature of serious games is persuasion, an attempt to influence behaviors, feelings, or thoughts. Much of the existing research on serious games and, more generally, on persuasive technology (PT), does not address the important links ...
Inferred lighting: fast dynamic lighting and shadows for opaque and translucent objects
This paper presents a three phase pipeline for real-time rendering that provides fast dynamic light calculations while enabling greater material flexibility than deferred shading. This method, called inferred lighting, allows lighting calculations to ...
An interactive simulation system for flying Japanese kites
This paper presents an interactive simulation system for flying kites, especially of Japanese types, and discusses the development of a flying kite game with a haptic interface device on a personal computer. The kite interacts with fluid and the ...
The Bespoke 3DUI XNA Framework: a low-cost platform for prototyping 3D spatial interfaces in video games
This paper presents the Bespoke 3DUI XNA Framework, an open-source software platform for research in 3D user interaction. The Bespoke 3DUI XNA Framework distinguishes itself from other platforms, in that it provides 3D user interface machinery in a game ...
Heuristics for continuity editing of cinematic computer graphics scenes
We present a set of heuristics for editing footage of 3D computer graphics cinematic sequences into a coherent movie clip which obeys the conventions of continuity editing. Our approach mimics the decision processes of an editor assembling a clip out of ...
Game design principles for engaging cooperative play: core mechanics and interfaces for non-mimetic simulation of fire emergency response
Core mechanics are the activities that players repeat to play a game, the central aspects of play constrained by rules. Interfaces mediate play experiences, impacting engagement with core mechanics. We design core mechanics for gathering, integrating, ...
Experimental evaluation of teaching recursion in a video game
We present EleMental: The Recurrence, a novel game that provides computer science students the opportunity to write code and perform interactive visualizations to learn about recursion through depth-first search of a binary tree. We designed the game to ...
Cardboard semiotics: reconfigurable symbols as a means for narrative prototyping in game design
In this paper, we propose the technique of cardboard semiotics. We explain the importance of symbolic analysis as a tool for building narrative prototypes in videogames. Borrowing from the participatory design work in the early 1990s, we suggest a means ...
Game design for social networks: interaction design for playful dispositions
The author argues that tasks of designing games for online social networks, such as Facebook, can benefit from understanding the project as a practice where techniques and methods of game design are embedded into interaction design and service design ...
A high performance visual profiler for games
Video games are software products with the purpose to entertain its players. Unfortunately, the performance of video games can suddenly decrease; this phenomenon is called a frame drop, and causes the amount of fun experienced by players to drop. To ...
Presence-enhancing real walking user interface for first-person video games
For most first-person video games it is important that players have a high level of feeling presence in the displayed game environment. Virtual reality (VR) technologies have enormous potential to enhance gameplay since players can experience the game ...
Understanding visual interfaces for the next generation of dance-based rhythm video games
We present an experimental study exploring how to best guide users when playing RealDance, a next generation dancing game prototype. It uses four Nintendo Wii remotes, attached to the wrists and ankles, to create a 3D spatial interface utilizing the ...
Rock Band: a case study in the design of embodied interface experience
There has been a recent surge of novel interface devices available for home gaming systems. With the rise in popularity of games like Guitar Hero and consoles such as Nintendo's Wii comes new opportunities for game design at the interface level. In this ...
Art of defense: a collaborative handheld augmented reality board game
In this paper, we present Art of Defense (AoD), a cooperative handheld augmented reality (AR) game. AoD is an example of what we call an AR Board Game, a class of tabletop games that combine handheld computers (such as camera phones) with physical game ...
A framework for exertion interactions over a distance
Exertion games are an emerging form of computer games that aim to leverage the advantages of sports and exercise in order to support physical, social and mental health benefits. Despite the increased attention these games received recently, there is a ...
A unified approach for physically-based simulations and haptic rendering
Based on our new geometric data structure, the inner sphere trees, we present fast and stable algorithms for different kinds of collision detection queries between rigid objects at haptic rates. Namely, proximity queries and the penetration volume, ...
Giving your self to the game: transferring a player's own movements to avatars using tangible interfaces
We investigate the cognitive connection players create between their own bodies and the virtual bodies of their game avatars through tangible interfaces. The work is driven by experimental results showing that execution, perception and imagination of ...
Index Terms
- Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games