cubrik and gaming experience@qualinet

AN INTRODUCTION TO

GAME DESIGN,PLAYTESTING AND

GAMES WITH A PURPOSE

LUCA GALLI

POLITECNICO DI MILANO

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ABOUT MYSELF

LUCA GALLI

Ph.D. Student - Politecnico di Milano

http://www.lucagalli.me

lgalli@elet.polimi.it

• RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND INTERESTS

• Robotics & AI• Game Design• Crowdsourcing and Human Computation

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AGENDA

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AGENDA

• Play vs Games• Pointers to Game Design• Introduction to Games with a

Purpose • Gameplay validation through

playtesting• A Classic Example: Big Rigs

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Something really bad is going to happen…

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Or not?

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WHAT IS PLAY?

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Autonomy: play is a voluntary activity.

Safety: during play there are radically reduced serious consequences in what we do

Exploration: the possibility to experiment and try out new things

Mastery: the will to improve one’s own skills

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GAMES VS PLAY

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Games are distinguished from play

– Play is free-form

– Games are rule-basedA game is a closed, formal system that· Engages players in structured conflict and· Resolves its uncertainty in an unequal outcome.

Fullerton, T.; Swain, C. & Hoffman, S.Game Design Workshop: A playcentric approach to creating innovative games, 2008

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FLASH INTRODUCTION TO GAME DESIGN

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Mancala,  7th century AD

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Unreal Tournament 3, Epic Games, 2007

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Turn based boardgame vs Real time action shooter

Handmade physical board vs Personal Computer

Public domain rules vs Copyrighted

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1 - PLAYERS

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2 - OBJECTIVES

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OBJECTIVES: EXAMPLES

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Solution: solve a problem or puzzle before (or more accurately) than the competition or following certain constraints

Connect Four, Milton Bradley, 1974

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, Level-5, 2011

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3 - PROCEDURES

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3 – PROCEDURES: EXAMPLE

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Starting action: Choose a player to go first. Each player chooses a color: red or yellow.

Progression of action: On each turn, a player drops one colored checker down any of the slots in the top of the grid.

Resolving actions: The play alternates until one of the players gets four checkers of one color in a row. The row can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

Connect Four

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4 - RULES• Define Objects• Restrict Actions• Determine Effects (ECA rules)

Chess: A player cannot move her king into check.

Poker: A straight is five consecutively rankedcards; a straight flush is five consecutively ranked cards of the same suit.

WarCraft II: To create knight units, a player must have upgraded to a keep and built a stable.

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5 – RESOURCES: EXAMPLE

Card Hunter, Blue Manchu Pty Ltd, TBR

Time

Points

Actions

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6 - OUTCOME

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GAMES WITH A PURPOSE

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Games with a Purpose (GWAPs) are digital games that generate useful data as a by-product of play. [vA06,LvA09]

The design of a GWAP requires to create a game so that its structure encourages computation, correctness of the output and players retention.

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EXAMPLE:INGRESS

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EXAMPLE: INGRESS

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EXAMPLE: AUSTRALIA COVERED

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CASE STUDY: FASHION TREND MINING

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Problem statement: segment fashion images for mining trends based on visual features of garments (e.g. color and texture)

Use case: identifying trends in collections of images of people and garments

Applications: retrieving similar garments, inspect clothing trends in image collections, analyzing trends change in the years

Color descriptors

Texture descriptors

coarse(sub-)image similarity

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THE FASHION TREND MINING PIPELINE

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Male, 24 Female, 22Female?, ??

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REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION

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Task Description: Recognize if a particular garment is present within a picture or define a new one and outline its contours.

Input Objects: A fashion image, an optional tag defining the garment to identify.

Aggregation Strategy: assign a value of 0 to each pixel outside the contour and 1 to each pixel contained within the contour, sum all the contribution and apply a threshold based on the number of players.

Output Data: For each submitted task the game has to provide the contour of the garment within the image (Polyline) and a tag defining the garment that has been segmented

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Solution Mechanics: Pattern Recognition

Established genre: Draw and Guess

Inversion Problem Mechanic

PLAYERS:Number >=2

Multilateral Competition

Two different roles:Sketcher: has to draw the contours

of the stated garmentGuesser: has to guess the garment

drawn by the sketcher

SKETCHNESS

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PLAYER ROLE: SKETCHER

● The only player to see the low confidence image

● “May” be asked to provide atag for the image

● Is asked to draw the contourof the object for which the tag is provided within theallotted time

● Goal of the Sketcher is to let the other players guessthe tag within a time slotwithout providingany other hints than thecontour

Low Confidence

Image

Tag of the target object

Contour provided

by the user

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PLAYER ROLE: GUESSER

● Any other player in the game

● His/Her goal is to guess the object for which the Sketcherhas provided the contour

● Not allowed to draw on the whiteboard, just to typein the chat box the probableanswer as fast as possible

● Scoring:

● Sketcher: 10 pts + 1 for each guesser

● Guesser: 10 pts to the first, thendecreasing down to five

Contour of the garment provided by the Sketcher

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RESULTS:

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RESULTS:

Sketchness Aggregator

Kota Yamaguchi, M Hadi Kiapour, Luis E Ortiz, Tamara L Berg, "Parsing Clothing in

Fashion Photographs", CVPR 2012

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TASK TO GAME MECHANICS MATCHING

Does a game with game mechanics similar to the task exist?

If so, integrate the task within the existing game

If not, a custom game with custom game mechanics has to be implemented...

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HOW TO EVALUATE A GAME?

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The Goal is a fun game…

… but also to solve a task!

Game designs are hypotheses

Playtests are experiments

Evaluate designs off playtest results

Repeat

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REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION

uTaskTask Description

Input Objects

Output Objects

Execution Interface

Operations Output Validation

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HOW TO IMPROVE GAME DESIGN

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We want to make informed decisions:

• Get data early, get data often

• Iterate constantly

• We don’t know what’s best (players do)

• Create a feedback loop between design and

playtest

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TRADITIONAL METHODSDIRECT OBSERVATION

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TRADITIONAL METHODSVERBAL REPORTS

I don’t know what I am

supposed to do...

I am bad at drawing...

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TRADITIONAL METHODSQ&A/SURVEYS

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TRADITIONAL METHODSISSUES

Artificial gameplay sessions

– Many potential biases

– Distorted data (interpreted behavior)

– Lack of empiricism

– Missing elements of objectivity

– Sometimes difficult to establish emotions,

baselines, and independence

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TECHNICAL APPROACHESSTAT COLLECTION

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TECHNICAL APPROACHESSTAT COLLECTION

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TECHNICAL APPROACHESPHYSIOLOGICAL MEASUREMENTS

Heartrate

Skin Conductance Level

Eye Tracking

Face Recording

EEG

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A CLASSIC EXAMPLE:

Just how bad is Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing? It's as bad as yourmind will allow you to comprehend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f3HDsgLV68

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CONCLUSIONS

•Play is a universal need

•Games and videogames are entertaining and controlled means to satisfy it

•We can exploit players to accomplish astonishing results...

•...if we design a good and tailored gaming experience

•Technological improvements cannot fix a gameplay mined by bad design choices

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THE CUBRIK PROJECT

● CUbRIK is a research project financed by the European Union

● Goals:

● Advance the architecture of multimedia search

● Exploit the human contribution in multimedia search

● Use open-source components provided by the community

● Start up a search business ecosystem

● http://www.cubrikproject.eu/

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