| 1. |
- Backlund, Per, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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Spelforskning i Sverige : LevelUp projektrapport
- 2024
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Rapporten bygger på tre delstudier med olika datainsamlingstekniker:En bibliometristudie av svensk spelforskning baserad på data från Scopus respektive SwePub.En enkätstudie över svenska spelforskningsmiljöer.En intervjustudie om svenska spelforskarmiljöer.Bibliometristudiens ansats har varit bred. Materialet inkluderar därmed även poster som endast har en perifer koppling till spel, men returnerar i fallet SwePub färre än 3000 poster. Spelforskning bedrivs på många lärosäten i Sverige och publiceras inom många ämnesområden. Totalt 95 forskare har en publicering som omfattar 10 eller fler spelpublikationer1. Det finns starka lokala kluster av forskare som sampublicerar men sampubliceringen mellan svenska och nordiska lärosäten är inte så omfattande. Jämfört med Finland har Sverige färre publikationer med ett tydligt fokus på spelforskning.Enkätstudien visar att spelforskarmiljöerna oftast består av ett antal forskare med olika ämnesmässig bakgrund där de själva definierar sig som spelforskare snarare än att organisationen som sådan gör det. Miljöerna har sammantaget och högt räknat runt 30 aktiva doktorander men siffran är osäker. 94% av respondenterna anger att deras forskning ligger inom ”spel för andra områden än underhållning” och endast 6% anger ”spelteknikfokus”. 44% anger ”spelbranschen”. Det är tydligt att spel för just underhållning inte ligger fokus för svensk spelforskning. Detta är remarkabelt då den svenska datorspelsindustrin är en multimiljardindustri fokuserad på just spel som underhållning. Det finns alltså en mycket stor diskrepans mellan industri och svensk spelforskning.Intervjustudien ger en bild av att spelforskningen bedrivs inom splittrade miljöer, av forskare med olika ämnesmässig bakgrund. Det finns en tydlig upplevd brist på forskningsfinansiering inom adekvata områden och det finns brister i de finansieringsinstrument som finns idag. Detta påverkar såväl vilken typ av forskning som kan bedrivas inom spel och rekryteringen av forskarstuderande. Respondenterna är överlag mycket positivt inställda till idén om en nationell forskarskola. Flera ser också Svenska Spelforskarrådet som en viktig aktör för att stärka svensk spelforskning både nationellt och internationellt.Rekommendationer:Det bör finnas en tydligare egen hemvist för forskning och utbildning inom spel för att tydliggöra kärnan i området.Fokus för forskningen behöver förändras så att spel för underhållning kommer mer i fokus.Finansieringsinstrumenten för spelforskning behöver förändras för att möjliggöra en sådan förändring.En nationell forskarskola inom spel bör inrättas.Det finns anledning att lära av framgångsrika miljöer i Finland och Danmark.
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| 2. |
- Karlsson, Tobias, et al.
(författare)
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Level Design Processes and Challenges : A Cross Section of Game Development
- 2023
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Ingår i: Games and Culture. - : Sage Publications. - 1555-4120 .- 1555-4139. ; 18:6, s. 821-849
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines level design processes and challenges at professional game stu- dios. Thematic analysis of data, recorded through field studies and semi-structured interviews, identify four key themes: level design as an interdisciplinary effort; who is the level designer; the role of narrative in level design; and challenges of managing creativity in the level design process. Results indicate that while the role called level designer is often assigned to specific disciplines, the process of level design is usually highly interdisciplinary. Furthermore, this interdisciplinary collaboration requires management to maintain both creativity and efficient pipelines, by distributing owner- ship and facilitating communication and planning. The level design process seems par- ticularly vulnerable to suboptimal interdisciplinary communication and planning, due to significant reliance on narrative design, game design, art, sound design, and tool development. While this article addresses level design specifically, most observations are comparable to previous findings on game development in general.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Bäckström, Caroline, et al.
(författare)
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Expecting parents' perceptions of the digital parental support "childbirth journey" constructed as a serious game : an intervention study
- 2022
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Ingår i: Digital Health. - : Sage Publications. - 2055-2076. ; 8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: The aim of this study was to explore expecting parents’ perceptions of the Childbirth Journey as an intervention that includes medical information for parental support, constructed as a serious game.Methods: In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were held with expecting parents in Sweden who were able to talk about specific parts of the Childbirth Journey they appreciated or found difficult to understand. A phenomenographic methodology was employed for data analysis.Results: Participants perceived the Childbirth Journey to be easily accessible and customized with reliable information. The design and features of the intervention were perceived by the expecting parents to enhance the intervention’s usability, appeal, and trustworthiness. When parental couples used the Childbirth Journey together, it gave them an opportunity to discuss and better understand each other’s situation. The participants proposed several changes to the existing version of the game, mostly related to extending practical information and illustrated scenarios but also to the further development of the game’s design and animations. The participants found the Knowledge portal to be the most appealing part of the Childbirth Journey.Conclusions: The Childbirth Journey intervention was concluded to be a valuable digital complement to in-person profes- sional support, especially given the current COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in place in Sweden, which do not allow antenatal visits by partners. However, in its current form, the Childbirth Journey has some deficiencies and would therefore benefit from further development and exploration.
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| 5. |
- Engström, Henrik, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Serious games design knowledge : Experiences from a decade (+) of serious games development
- 2022
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Ingår i: EAI Endorsed Transactions on Serious Games. - : European Alliance for Innovation (EAI). - 2034-8800. ; 6:1, s. 1-13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- INTRODUCTION: Serious games is an effort to combine the engagement and motivation from games with some sort of utility beyond mere entertainment.OBJECTIVES: The objective of this paper is to revisit and analyse six projects to explore the design space for serious games and derive design guidelines for serious games.METHODS: We analysed our project portfolio to identify a set of projects which satisfied well-established guidelines for design science research. By analysing these projects as well as their outcomes we generated a set of design principles for serious games.RESULTS: The results from this study is a conceptualisation of the design space for serious games and seven design principles.CONCLUSION: By explicating the game design component in serious games and relating it to the utility dimension we add to the understanding of the serious games from a game perspective, which is relevant to any development effort intending to use the persuasive and motivational power of games.
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| 6. |
- Koohnavard, Saina, et al.
(författare)
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Mode och spel : en förstudie för nya digitala möjligheter till hållbar utveckling
- 2022
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Digitaliseringen av mode växer fram i allt större takt och under en tid där fysisk interaktion är begränsat. Under de senaste åren har flertalet samarbeten ägt rum mellan mode- och spelföretag, där digitala tvillingar av fysiska kläder skapas och implementeras i spel. Denna förstudie är finansierad av Västra Götalandsregionen och ämnar att undersöka kopplingar mellan mode och spel, dess skillnader och likheter när det kommer till konsumtion och betydelse av digitala respektive fysiska kläder, samt även undersöka samarbetsvägarna mellan dessa två områden och hur samarbeten skulle kunna se ut. Under förstudien har aktörer inom mode- och spelindustri intervjuats och en workshop har hållits för att få en djupare förståelse kring gemensamma intressepunkter och utmaningar. Resultatet har visat att det finns starka paralleller kring kläders representation för både skaparen och användaren i båda världar och att utmaningarna för samarbete dels ligger i tekniska begränsningar, företagskultur och bristande kunskap om det andra området hos respektive område. Resultatet visar också ett växande intresse och behov av hybriddesigner eller hybrida team som agerar som broar mellan dessa två områden.
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| 7. |
- Su, Yanhui
(författare)
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Bringing Game Analytics to Indie Game Publishing : Method and Tool Support for Indie Mobile Game Publishing
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- With the continuous development of the game industry, the research in the game field is also deepening. Many interdisciplinary knowledge areas and theories have been used to promote the development of the game industry. Business Intelligence (BI) has been applied in game development for game design and game optimization. However, few systematic research efforts focus on the game publishing side, especially for independent (indie) game publishing.From the game business side, with the development of the game industry, the traditional game value chain has been complemented by the mobile value chain and the online value chain. The mobile game value chain refers to a new situation where game developers can publish games directly through different distribution channels like App Store (2020) and Google Play (2022). The online value chain means developers can connect with players directly, for example, through their own websites. These new value chains make indie game developers publishing possible. However, how indie game developers conduct the game publishing business is unclear. In addition, as more and more indie game developers focus on the mobile platform, creating increasingly fierce competition for players' attention. Many indie game developers are good at game development, but most lack experience in game publishing. They have issues with user acquisition work and how to transfer users into loyal and paying players.This research plans to understand how game analytics can be used for indie mobile game publishing. In practice, a new method has been created and developed to guide indie game developers’ decision-making during free-to-play (F2P) mobile game publishing. This new method mainly focuses on addressing the main challenges of indie game developers during mobile game publishing. The new method facilitates indie mobile game publishing by providing guidance on how data collection and analysis can be conducted.Design Science Research (DSR) method is used to fulfill the overall research aim. The DSR method is used to guide the development of an artifact based on previous literature and empirical findings from working with indie game companies. Theoretical background was obtained through a literature review of BI adoption and usage in the game area, especially for game analytics. The empirical materials were gathered through interviews and surveys with indie game companies in Sweden and Asia. The main challenges with their game publishing can be determined through semi-structured interviews with indie game developers and combined with the literature review. Then a tentative design is provided based on the identified needs, and the existing ARM funnel model is extended and optimized. Based on the tentative design demonstrations and iterations with different indie game companies, the tentative design is refined until a method is finally provided. Based on the evaluation of several indie game companies from Asia, it can be concluded that this method can guide indie game developers with F2P (free-to-play) mobile game publishing and address their main challenges.This research contributes both to research and practice. From the research perspective, the main contribution of this research is based on the traditional game value chain evolution and the indie game company interviews to identify the main challenges for indie mobile game publishing. Then a new method is proposed to address the main challenges and guide indie game developers with mobile game publishing. From the practice perspective, the method provided in this thesis is the guidelines and also with the newly developed game data analysis tool, called F2PAP. It can be used in actual game projects and guide indie game developers with data collection, analysis, visualization, evaluation of their game business performance, and taking actions to improve their game publishing.
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| 8. |
- Su, Yanhui, et al.
(författare)
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Data-driven method for mobile game publishing revenue forecast
- 2022
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Ingår i: Service Oriented Computing and Applications. - : Springer. - 1863-2386 .- 1863-2394. ; 16:1, s. 67-76
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Games as a service is similar to software as a service, which provides players with game content on a continuous monetization model. Game revenue forecast is vital to game developers to make the right business decisions, such as determining the marketing budget, controlling the development cost, and setting up benchmarks for evaluating game publishing performance. How to make the revenue forecast and integrate it with the game publishing process is hard for small and medium-sized independent (indie) game developers. This includes all steps of the process, from forecasting to decision-making based on the results. This paper provides a data-driven method that uses the mobile game revenue forecast based on different time-series prediction models to drive the game publishing. We demonstrate how to use the data-driven method to guide an indie game studio to forecast revenue and then set the revenue forecast as the internal benchmark to drive game publishing. In practice, we involve a real game project from an indie game studio and provide guidance for one of their casual game projects. Then, based on the revenue forecast, we discuss how to set the revenue forecast as an internal benchmark and drive the actions for mobile game publishing. Finally, we make a conclusion on how our data-driven method can be used to drive mobile game publishing and also discuss future research work.
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| 9. |
- Toftedahl, Marcus, 1981-
(författare)
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Being Local in a Global Industry : Game Localization from an Indie Game Development Perspective
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During recent years a rise of small, independent game developers have become a large part of the global game industry. These indie developers are often distributing their games using digital distribution with a self-publishing business model. While the possibilities to reach a large global audience are expanding with digital distribution, there are also challenges for the developers, where the work tasks previously handled by a publisher now has to be handled by the developers themselves. One such work task directly related to the globalness of the game industry is localization, which is the process of altering a product in such ways it can be used by consumers in a specific target market. The main objective of the thesis project is to understand how indie game developers are working with game localization as a part of the development process. In this case, "indie" refers to developers with limited resources in terms of financing and manpower, using a self-publishing business model. The research has partly been carried out through participatory field studies in close connection to indie game developers and development clusters in Sweden, China, and India. In addition to this, the technical aspects of game localization have been scrutinized through studies of localization support in commonly used game engines and game development tools.The results of the thesis show that game localization is an important development task due to the global nature of the game industry, but that its complexity often is underestimated by the developers. To reach a large player base, localization is a must and should be planned for early in the process. Further, the results show that game localization is less resource demanding ifusing a localization friendly production pipeline, and that the tools to set up such production pipelines are available in all major game engines
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| 10. |
- Brusk, Jenny, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Marvinter : A case study of an inclusive transmedia storytelling production
- 2021
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Ingår i: Convergence. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. - : Sage Publications. - 1354-8565 .- 1748-7382. ; 27:1, s. 103-123
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines how the unique characteristics of Marvinter, an inclusive transmedia Advent calendar, affected its production and the individual media workers involved in this. In the native transmedia Marvinter project, a radio series and a mobile game were created and released simultaneously. Using ‘partly shared’ resources, the project was developed by two collaborating, non-profit organisations. Each chapter of the digital game had to match the corresponding radio episode. The whole had to be designed to provide a shared cultural experience that included people with hearing or visual impairments. The authors of the present article were part of the game development team and thus directly experienced the complexity of developing a digital game as part of a transmedia project. This article presents the results of a case study with an insider perspective. It is supplemented by semi-structured interviews with key people in the project. The transmedia nature of Marvinter was justified by the need to include people with complementary disabilities. Although sometimes associated with negative connotations of ‘naked commercialisation’ in transmedia contexts, the marketing strategy was here an important element in promoting inclusivity. However, owing to the concurrent work processes, game production became overly complex.
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