Design and use of serious games

Contents Part I Game Production Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game Mikael Lebram, Per Backlund, Henrik Engström, Mikael Johannesson of a Fitness

Design and Use of Serious Games

International Series on

INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, CONTROL, AND AUTOMATION: SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

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Professor S Monaco, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy

Professor G Schmidt, Technical University of Munich, Germany

VOLUME 37

Professor S G Tzafestas, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Professor F Harashima, University of Tokyo, Japan

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Design and Use of Serious Games

Marja Kankaanranta • Pekka Neittaanmäki

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University of Jyväskylä

Research Institute for Educational

Fl-40014 Jyväskylä

Finland

Pekka Neittaanmäki University of Jyväskylä Dept Mathematical Information Technology

Fl-40351 Jyväskylä Finland

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008939845

© Springer Science+Business Media, B.V 2009

ISBN: 978-1-4020-9495-8 e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-9496-5

Marja Kankaanranta

Preface

During the last few years, a new area of creative media industry, namely Serious Games, has started to emerge around the world The term serious games has become more popular for example in the fields of education, business, welfare and safety Despite this, there has been no single definition of serious games A key question, what the concept itself means, has stayed unsolved though most have agreed on a with game technology and design principles for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment

engaging, self-reinforcing context in which to motivate and educate the players Serious games can be of any genre, use any game technology, and be developed for any platform They can be entertaining, but usually they teach the user something The central aim of serious games is to raise quality of life and well-being As part

of interactive media industry, the serious games field focuses on designing and using digital games for real-life purposes and for the everyday life of citizens in information societies The field of serious games focuses on such areas as education, business, welfare, military, traffic, safety, travelling and tourism

This book focuses on the field of serious games from various aspects The book contains 13 papers and four aspects of serious games: game production, learning, the social point of view, and technical applications Part I is devoted to game pro-duction and it consists of four articles The first article presents three approaches towards teaching game production The second article describes the design and architecture of a cave based firefighter training game The human-centered design process of a location-based sport game Fitness Adventure is presented in the third article In the last article of this part, children’s involvement in the design of two game-based learning environments is discussed

Part II addresses topics related to learning: language learning and the use of mercial games in instruction The first article presents a framework for development and analysis of an educational design for a platform used for teaching English as a foreign language in primary schools The second article continues in the field of language learning It discusses experiences from designing a role-playing game for language learning and explores competence requirements and cooperation required from the development team The other two articles in this part strive to understand and look for the ways of using commercial games also for purposes of learning In the third article, the attitudes and experiences of Finnish school teachers towards commercial educational games are portrayed The fourth article examines introduction of social simulation videogame as an educational tool in classrooms The focus is on the activities and conversations among teacher, children and resear-chers

com-vdefinition that serious games are games or game-like interactive systems developed

In this book, serious games are understood as games which aim at providing an

Part III is dedicated to the social point of view This part consists of articles on playing together with the camera of a mobile device, social networks in gaming, article presents an approach to a multiplayer mobile game It discusses how an integ-rated camera would be used to support communication and collaboration in multi-player mobile games The second article considers social networks in gaming and describes a study on social networks built during the prerelease campaign of the AnimalClass game series The last article of this part presents a multiplayer inter-face for a computer-augmented learning game

Part IV is devoted to technical applications of serious games – a driving game and a game-like tool for process simulation and analysis Firstly, a noncommercial driving game which became a serious tool in the research of driver fatigue is pre-sented After that, the last article of the book introduces a game-like tool for visual process simulation and analysis

Material consists of selected papers or game presentations from Serious Games conference organized by Agora Game Laboratory of University of Jyväskylä in February 2008 Additional material has been included in order to broaden the scope of the volume

Special acknowledgements are due to Terhi Tuukkanen from University of Jyväskylä for her most constructive role in the various stages of this project We would also like to express our gratitude to the reviewers of the papers, as well as all those involved in the publication process Finally we want to thank Springer Publishing house for flexible and efficient collaboration

Contents

Part I Game Production

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training

Game

Mikael Lebram, Per Backlund, Henrik Engström, Mikael Johannesson

of a Fitness Adventure Prototype

Environments: Cases Talarius and Virtual Peatland

Part II Learning

Learning – a Framework for Development and Analysis

Bente Meyer, Birgitte Holm Sørensen

Ellen Brox, Audun Heggelund, Gunn Evertsen

Educational Games

Minna Klemetti, Olli Taimisto, Paula Karppinen

Using Videogames as Educational Tools: Building Bridges Between

Commercial and Serious Games

Developing a Language Learning Game

The Attitudes of Finnish School Teachers Towards Commercial

97

107

vii

Human-Centred Design and Exercise Games: User’s Experiences

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production

Children’s Involvement in the Design of Game-Based Learning

Comptence Complexity and Obvious Learning: Experience from

Designing Serious Games for Computer Assisted Language

Pilar Lacasa, Laura Méndez, Rut Martínez

Antti Väätänen, Jaana Leikas

Part III Social Perspective

Let’s Play Together with the Camera of Your Mobile Device

Ekaterina Kuts, Carolina Islas-Sedano, Erkki Sutinen

AnimalClass: Social Networks in Gaming

Harri Ketamo, Marko Suominen

Multiplayer Interface for a Computer-Augmented Learning Game

Ari Putkonen, Markus Forstén

Part IV Technical Applications

RACER: A Non-Commercial Driving Game which Became a Serious

Tool in the Research of Driver Fatigue

Narciso González, Igor Kalyakin, Heikki Lyytinen

VIPROSA – Game-like Tool for Visual Process Simulation

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production

Tuomas Mäkilä 1 , Harri Hakonen 1 , Jouni Smed 1 and Andy Best 2

1) Department of Information Technology, University of Turku;

firstname.lastname@utu.fi

2) Digital Arts, Turku University of Applied Sciences; FI-20520 Turku, Finland

firstname.lastname@turkuamk.fi

Abstract: Teaching game production benefits computer science and engineering

students, because game applications are usually complex interactive real-time systems, which are non-trivial to implement Moreover, game production has a multi-disciplinary nature, because – in addition to software development – a game production process can include areas such as commercialization issues, game design, graphics design and implementation, sound engineering, level design, and story design This kind of project environment teaches the development team to work and communicate efficiently Having organized a variety of game produc-tion project courses in the Department of Information Technology in the Univer-sity of Turku the students have implemented complete computer games or game proto-types Our focus has been on teaching game related algorithms, software technologies and software engineering aspects of game production We have used three different teaching approaches to organize the courses: (1) the traditional home assignment model where the students take full responsibility of organizing the production, (2) research seminars where the teachers act as direct customers for the production, and (3) intensive courses where the teachers participate in the production as coaches and mentors In this presentation, we describe the three differ-ent teaching approaches, present them as formal process models, and compare them

to commercial game production processes Additionally, we consider the disciplinary nature of game production and discuss how the issue can be taken into consideration in a study environment where the students are mainly technology oriented

multi-1 Introduction to Game Production

This article discusses how game production can be used as a teaching tool in

vari-© Springer Science + Business Media B.V 2009

ous different situations and what requirements different types of course set to the

3 FI-20014 University of Turku, Finland

M Kankaanranta and P Neittaanmäki (eds.), Design and Use of Serious Games, 3–18.

4 T Mäkilä et al

production process The article is based on the case studies of three different course types held by the authors All have utilized game production as a teaching tool The qualitative aspects of the cases are analyzed and compared

The goal of game production is to produce fully-working game products Game production is a discipline that builds on the tradition and the methodologies of project management, software engineering and cultural productions The game production life-cycle defines the basic activities which have to be accomplished before a game idea actualizes into a working game product Although every game and every production team has its own ways of working, some generic models for game production life-cycle activities have been proposed (game production pro-cess, game production hand-book)

Fig 1 Comparison between two game production models (Manninen et al 2006) (Chandler 2006) and one software product development model (Hohmann 2003) The development phases are described on the upper half and more detailed production phase steps on the lower half

If we compare game production models to the generic software product ment model we find notable similarities (Figure 1) All models have a starting or

develop-a pre-production phdevelop-ase when develop-a (gdevelop-ame) product idedevelop-a is defined develop-and its fedevelop-asibility is evaluated from the production and business viewpoint, a production phase when the actual product is developed, a quality assurance phase when the final quality of the product is tested, and a release phase when the project is wrapped up and the product is released to the customer Manninen et al (2006) address the post-release activities, e.g bug-fixes and user support, which are a natural part of the product life-cycle

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production 5

The development and production activities are also quite similar between the game production models and the software product development model The multidisciplinary nature of game production forms the greatest difference While the activities in the software product development model focus solely on the soft-ware development and testing, the game production activities include the coopera-tive work of artists, animators, game designers, level designers, musicians, and programmers

Although production modes and best practices exist, surprisingly many game production projects do not utilize well-known project management practices Some

of these productions still manage to be highly successful (Larsen 2002) This shows that there is not one right way to do or teach game production, but also that pro-duction training has its place

2 Three Perspectives to Computer Games

Computer game research and education includes three academic perspectives depicted in Figure 2 The Humanistic perspective is concerned with how a game affects and changes the users, gaming communities, other social networks, and society at large The Business perspective is concerned with the economics around computer games As an example, this includes issues of competing in the market-place, productization, and investment strategies The Construction perspective deals with the actual making of an executable computer game

Fig 2 Three perspectives that affect the game production process

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Although each of the perspectives provides essential topics for study, in this paper we focus on the construction perspective In other words, our viewpoint is the constructional aspects of software development in the domain of computer games This has four sub-perspectives:

1 Game design: What is the intended end-user experience and what game elements contribute to it?

2 Content creation: What are the entertainment artefacts and functionalities and how they are represented?

3 Game programming: How to implement the software mechanisms that serve the content creation so that the game design goals are achieved?

4 Software construction: How to weave the digital game components into the cutable game?

exe-These perspectives target product design and development and they categorize the main artistic and technical concerns in the making of computer games Let us consider how the perspectives relate to one another

Game design encapsulates the vision, intention, concept and theme of a game For example, it includes activities for designing the back-stories, composing the opposing forces and major roles, and developing the synthetic participants, such as in-game characters, sidekicks, and deus ex machina The game design is a creative process but it is governed by the rules of play, since we need an outcome that ful-fils the definition of a game

Nowadays, there are high demands on the aesthetics, end-user experience, and re-playability of a game To meet these challenges cost-effectively the game design

is implemented on two fronts at the same time Simply put, the intended features of the game can be divided into art and technology The ‘art’ is entertainment content, which is run by the technology platform The platform requires specialized pro-gramming effort in some form even if it is purchased These two fronts require deep expertise, and thus they form their own profession However, these areas of exper-tise are not disassociated in game development, instead, one of the key challenges

is how to bring them together In other words, when making a game we have to consider, for example, programming, 3-D modelling, and animation together The game industry has pioneered finding practices and technologies for the interaction

of many disciplines, such as computer science, art and design, business, ment, and productization One can argue that game development is an expertise area

manage-in itself that connects these disciplmanage-ines

Software construction involves practices and tools for integrating the art and technology assets of the game into one executable system This is an often com-plex technical process that is automatized as far as possible

Because all these perspectives are present at the same time in a game, they are often developed in parallel: at first the emphasis is on the game design and gradu-ally, as the game attributes and features become fixed, the focus moves towards

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production 7

content creation and software system issues However, it is only seldom possible

to stabilize and freeze the whole game design Thus, there must be feedback activities that evaluate and control the possible changes to the game design This uncertainty

is intrinsic to software development and it arises from the digital nature of computer programs Especially due to different cost structures, the making of software differs considerably from the manufacturing process for physical products

In this article we identify challenges and opportunities that lie in the teaching of game production Then we go through three cases based on different course for-mats we have used to teach game production After the presentation of each of the cases we summarize the lessons learned from the course types Lastly, we conclude our article

3 Teaching Game Production: Opportunities and Challenges

Originally, the teaching of the game production process itself has not been our main goal in any of the courses we have taught Our curriculum has included other game related issues, such as game algorithms, artificial intelligence, object pro-gramming patterns, interactive storytelling, game design, and co-operation between artists and programmers Since our university does not have a degree program in making games our goal is to teach the students general skills within computer science and software engineering Even so, we constantly end up with course for-mats where students go through the game production cycle The reason is that using game production as an educational format creates several opportunities:

• Versatile but demarcated setting From the teachers’ point of view a game can serve as a mixing pot for various study subjects within a curriculum Also, the project-like form of instruction shows how to distinguish and intermix the essential activities and work products

• Pragmatic teaching approach It is easier for a student to understand advanced issues connected to the game content when the students actually make the games

• Higher motivation The students are motivated by real game development; simple tic-tac-toe assignments do not intrigue the students

• Visible results A working game demonstrates the acquired knowledge, e.g., have the students made rational decisions and have they fulfilled the given require-ments and specifications Also, in a game the user features are presented more visually than in the other kinds of software products

• General applicability We claim that computer game development is one of the most challenging software product domains, and thus students also learn bene-ficial practices used throughout the software industry (Hakonen 2006) and in the multimedia industry in general

8 T Mäkilä et al

There are also several challenges in using game production as a teaching method:

• Sufficient multidisciplinary teaching skills To facilitate this extrapolation, the teacher, or the group of teachers collectively, should have profound experience

on the whole computer game domain, teaching methods, and project work

• Readiness to learn The students participating in the game development courses must be proficient at their own field of study The digital design and art students should have traditional visual art skills as well as experience with the software tools used for digital art creation The software developers should master pro-gramming and information system design However, they must also be able to apply the acquired knowledge in the game domain and be ready to work in teams and to quickly learn new work practices

• Uncertainty It is not uncommon that in advanced education the resources are scarce, the working environment is volatile, and the planned results change over time For this reason the students must be able to cope with uncertainty and to have confidence that the topics get more understandable later

• Controlled simplification Over-simplification of complicated and intertwined topics can lead to misconceptions and conceptual distortions that ruin the learn-ing experience However, to keep the project feasible and manageable we have

to reduce the requirements for the teaching Apart from getting rid of irrelevant details, we recommend that the inherent complexity of the domain knowledge is preserved We claim that injecting more assumptions, i.e non-volatile require-ments and forces, into real-world project carries out the actual simplification When game production is taught within a concrete software development project

we have to know how to actually configure the project In general, the setting of the project configuration is as follows Before starting the project the teacher must determine what are the educational goals to be demonstrated with respect to the actual real world issues Next, the teacher establishes the perspectives from where the selected study topics are to be approached Then, by using hands-on experience and imagination, the teacher collects the simplifying assumptions so that the project becomes feasible without loosing the intention and the central aspects of the real world work In our case, we select and abstract topics within computer game deve-lopment For example, the goal can be an introduction to multiplayer gaming via a local area network (LAN) and the perspective can be a construction of communi-cation technology From this sub-domain we can select the topic, for example, the implementation of proper balance between consistency and responsiveness for a given game To simplify the project, we can stipulate the LAN connections are slow and have narrow bandwidth, the self-steering software team is located into one room, and the customers only want to see the alpha-release of the game with just the placeholder graphics in place Note that although the project can be con-figured to be simple, the inherent complexity can be kept: the project, product, and process issues can be presented together by adjusting their balance intentionally (Hakonen et al 2008) Consequently, the students recognize all the key expertise fields and interest groups that are concerned with game production

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production 9

4 Case 1: Traditional Assignment Course

In a traditional assignment course the students form a team and solve the given blem assignment as a homework exercise The teachers observe and monitor the development but avoid partaking in the actual work In the software development industry this kind of arrangement is called outsourcing, and the goal of the assign-ment is to implement a complete computer system To concentrate the students’ effort on the relevant issues the teachers lecture the theory behind the selected study topics beforehand Hence, the assignment should demonstrate the practical applications of those theories

pro-Although the course concentrates on the production phase of a game project, the preceding phases must also be taken into account To give the students ground-ing for ideas each student analyses individually some existing game that fits in with the course topics Then each student writes a game treatment that suggests the main ideas and features for the new game These game treatment documents form the basis from where the actual game concept is developed at the beginning

of the production phase To keep project management issues simple one team sisting of three to five students runs the game production lifecycle If more stu-dents have enrolled for the course the same assignment is given for each of the teams

con-Fig 3 The main activities of the traditional assignment course

10 T Mäkilä et al

The main activities of the course type are illustrated in Figure 3 The project work can be divided into three phases: inception, construction, and conclusion At first in the inception, the teachers prepare the assignment and the theory lectures This activity begins with selecting the study topics, outlining the game concept, and determining the results of the pre-production phase These three work pro-ducts determine the perspective and depth of the theory issues that are tackled in the project Then, the project setting is introduced to the students in lectures where the theoretical backgrounds are taught To support the game production aspect the lectures should include practical guidance for solving the most crucial problems Whereas the lectures ascertain that the students’ starting levels match the pre-requirements, presentation of the actual assignment acts as a decision point where the students either commit themselves to or drop out of the course The presentation of the assignment is one of the key activities for the successful execution of the assignment The assignment milestones, communication mecha-nisms and practices between the teachers and the students, references to guidance and extra resources, and the grading principles should be written explicitly for the students This focuses the students’ work on the assignment and they do not have

to consider the organizational details of the assignment itself

An the beginning of the course the students are taught and prepared for the forthcoming teamwork Especially if the students already have experience in team-work and the assignment is extensive the teachers can advise how to divide the work into sub-teams However, the main idea of a traditional assignment course is that the students organize their own work during the more elaborated design and creation of the game The teachers’ role is not to control how the team operates, nor how the development conflicts become resolved, or what tactical decisions are made Thus, this is the most demanding project course format we give to our stu-dents The teachers act as outside customers and they follow the progress through the project milestones set in the assignment As an example, a teacher assesses the feasibility of the work plans The teachers also provide external support on request for the project, for example, by advising, guiding, and coaching in situations that stop the project In extreme cases, the teachers can intervene and freeze the project until the problems are analyzed and further actions are found It should be noted that the rationale for this kind of autonomous assignment is to teach tacit know-ledge about software development in teams For example, the students should find out themselves how to take responsibility, communicate, and share know-how From our experience, if the students have sufficient base competence and the pre-ceding activities are effective, they do not need extensive assistance to accomplish advanced results

As with the projects in general, the assignment has a strict deadline after which the students present the game, demonstrate its features and write a post-mortem document about the project The writing of a post-mortem from a game project is

a retrospective practice where the participants list and analyze the most influential successes and failures In addition to ending discussions the post-mortem docu-ment sums up the tactical and strategic lessons learned and it provides the teachers

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production 11

feedback from the inception and construction phases Lastly, the teachers evaluate the results and grade the students on the team level We prefer not to evaluate each student individually because a team should be seen as one development unit; the balancing and fairness issues must be considered during the project, not after it In principle, a student can be expelled from a project but in our experience, situations have never escalated into this

5 Case 2: Research Laboratory Course

In a research laboratory course the students examine a scientific problem side the teachers, work on a practical solution to it, and report the results of the acquiring methods In the software development industry similar work is carried dents learn about the newest scientific topics and they have hands-on training into scientific work Secondly, the teachers, who are also researchers, benefit from fresh ideas and possibly new solutions to the research topic In our case this kind of cooperation has often lead on to further studies and even to joint research

along-The latest instance of this course we held focused on software technologies, architecture of a multiplayer game When the research question is a specific and mainly technical one the influence of the preceding and succeeding phases of the game project can be reduced This lessens the risk of failure, although the outcome

of the project tends to stay unpredictable until the deadline However, this also poses an educational problem because we are leaving out real-world problems con-cerning, for example, the launching of the project Fortunately, the problem has adequate solutions, and as an example, it is possible to organize a separate project course without a detailed construction phase To keep project management as simple

as possible one team includes five to seven students If more students have enrolled for the course the same problem is given for each of the teams and the teams are encouraged to balance between cooperation and friendly competition on technical and content issues Also, if the problem turns out to have many differentiating aspects the teams can share them

The main activities of the course type are depicted in Figure 4 The project work consists of three phases: inception, cooperative construction, and conclusion In the inception, the teachers also conduct the whole preproduction phase At first, the teachers prepare the assignment on their research questions and this activity determines the main concerns of the project Then, to make the experiment repeat-able and to have case setting the teachers design the game concept and features The game design is used for constraining the general research question; the idea is

to have a nontrivial case example that is feasible to solve with the given resources

requires the participants to have pragmatic skills of collaboration and knowledge

and especially, how certain object-oriented design patterns affect the software out in customer-on-site projects This course format has two goals Firstly, the stu-work to the whole class Usually, the course is at an advanced level because it

12 T Mäkilä et al

Fig 4 The main activities of the research laboratory course

The assignment and the game design are presented to the students after which they commit themselves to the course Finally, the teachers guide the students to organize the teamwork, practices, methods, and development tools Unlike in the traditional assignment course, the inception phase can be rather informal as the research prob-lem is well-defined

The construction phase of the pre-made game design is realized in several tions where the teachers and the students work alongside each other The students make decisions and construct the game mainly at the operational and tactical levels They are responsible for software and game level design, iteration planning, system and content development, and unit testing To aid the construction the teachers can also operate at the tactical level but they should avoid affecting the results Instead

itera-of giving ready solutions the teachers reveal on a need-to-know basis what aspects and alternatives the students should consider In other words, the teachers act as on-site customers who are interested in outcomes, not means This puts the stu-dents into a situation where they have to think out proper questions and possibly find out unforeseen answers The teachers control the strategic work by organizing frequent follow-up meetings where they verify the progress, prioritize the game features, and guide the forthcoming tasks

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production 13

The construction phase has a strict deadline after which the project proceeds to the conclusion phase At first, the students present the game, demonstrate its fea-tures, and discuss the project in retrospect Unlike in the traditional assignment course the teachers should write the post-mortem document because they are more experienced in reflecting scientific issues Then, the teachers evaluate the outcomes and grade the students Although we consider the team as one, individual grading

is also possible because the iteration work has been transparent and the game design

is complex enough that it leads to clearly specialized and dedicated roles Lastly, the teachers, preferably together with the students, analyze and report the scientific results Often, this results in other research questions, study papers, and theses

6 Case 3: Intensive Production Course

In an intensive production course the students and the teachers work together as one team to produce a computer game that demonstrates both digital art and soft-ware technology The production goal is to create a functional game prototype in a short period of time The project proceeds in intensive workdays of six to eight hours at one site with inter-connected computers In the software development industry this is called as customer-as-expert project Due to intensiveness each participant must attend all the workdays to be at the team-mates’ disposal and to keep up with the project pace The educational goal of the course is to encourage students having dissimilar backgrounds, i.e., digital art and software technology,

to work together Also, we foster mutual learning and extending understanding of the multidisciplinary nature of game development

The main focus of the course is collaboration between the different disciplines resulting in a working computer game This approach gives us leeway to adjust what we want to emphasize in the course without changing its format For example,

if all the participants are already familiar with the development tools of their own expertise area and skilled in versioning tools, more content creation and techno-logical challenges can be tackled in the course On the other hand, it is possible to emphasize the challenges in multimedia design and art by selecting ready-made technology platforms with uncomplicated scripting languages Thus, the teachers can put the students in such a situation where they keep motivated: the students have meaningful tasks from their own discipline, but at the same time they have to understand their impact on the whole The latter is not possible without collabora-tion over discipline boundaries As with the other course types, we prefer one-team co-located projects because we want simple communication practices Because the project has many disciplines and the teachers also work as team members, each team has a number of members with various skill-sets To keep the number of participants between ten and twenty the students apply to the course with curriculum vitae This also allows the teachers to plan the course adjustments, possible sub-teams, and role descriptions beforehand From these three course types this

14 T Mäkilä et al

one is the most challenging for the teachers because the schedule is tight, the workdays turn sporadically into chaos that must be managed, and in-advance and on-the-fly planning have to be balanced constantly

The main activities of this course type are presented in Figure 5 The project work has three phases: inception, continuous construction, and conclusion In the beginning of the inception the teachers prepare a preliminary schema for the course assignment and setup the infrastructure for the project For example, we have had an intensive production course for a non-violent shooter game and for a humorous point-and-click game The actual game idea and design are still left open The inception ends with assignment presentation where the students are introduced

to the project topics and facilities Because the students have passed the tion process they are already committed to the course

applica-The continuous construction begins with an open debate and brainstorming on the game ideas, their possibilities and the students’ interests in them It is impor-tant that at this stage the students form a mental bond with the game, and thus, the teachers should act only as moderators Then, the most promising ideas are refined and among them the core game idea is selected The actual project work iterates

Fig 5 The main activities of the intensive production course

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production 15

management and product level quality assurance Their first activity is to organize teamwork, practices, methods, and development tools Then, they coach and guide the students, verify art assets and software quality, resolve workflow conflicts, and plan and prioritize the creation process In other words, the teachers act as on-site customers who are experts on the disciplines and actively participate in the deve-lopment of the game The students are responsible for game design and its imple-mentation with digital art and software technology In other words, they have to make decisions on the game creation from the operational level up to the strategic the game The most difficult problems arise from where the disciplines are bound tightly together into one

As with the other course types the construction phase has a deadline at which the conclusion phase begins Despite the teachers participation in the project the students present the game in the final project meeting The relaxed atmosphere fosters open retrospective discussions and the teachers can verify their understand-ing about the successes and failures before writing the post-mortem document Finally, the teachers evaluate the results and grade the students As in the tradi-tional assignment course we prefer to evaluate only the team as one unit because

in this kind of intensive project individual work is subject to circumstances

7 Lessons Learned from Cases

Previous chapters described the main activities of the three different teaching approaches and showed the differences between the approaches In this chapter we define the common characteristics of three approaches and summarize the key lessons learned during the courses

Lesson 1: Game production provides a natural framework for project courses

Game production provides a suitable context for project oriented courses This is because the assignment projects done in each approach are not mock-up projects which are constructed to suite the teaching needs Instead, game production acts as

a practical framework and the pedagogical elements are injected into that This might explain why the students are motivated to pass these courses and feel that the course setting is rather realistic

Lesson 2: Larger team sizes have to be managed Another characteristic of

game production is that productions are usually self-organizing one team projects This might make course organization and evaluation harder when the course size increases We have found two methods to handle the problem: 1) Divide the stu-dents into smaller teams with their own responsibilities or 2) Divide the students into smaller teams and give the same production task to each With the latter method it

is surprising that the teams always end up with completely different results

the idea into a computer game The teachers take the responsibility for project

level For example, a level designer must look after the playability and immersion of

16 T Mäkilä et al

Lesson 3: Course formats do not restrict what kind of games can be developed

During the courses presented in the case study the students have produced a wide variety of different games from 2D real time strategy games to 3D shooters It must been admitted that none of the games would have met modern commercial standards, but with further development some of the games would well be equal to modern shareware or independent games Since the majority of the students have been computer science and engineering students, the emphasis of the game deve-lopment has been on the technical issues of game production Still, some of the games have also been visually appealing During the courses some of the student groups have been experimenting with unorthodox game concepts It can be said that the course formats presented do not set restrictions themselves on what kind of games can be produced Of course, the timeframe of an average university course set certain limits on what can be done and how polished the resulting games will be

Lesson 4: The assignment format can be seen as easy for the teachers but there

are pitfalls to look out for For the teachers the project courses are basically easy because the students do most of the work Of course, the preparation of the course and the assignment have to be done well so that students can focus on the assign-ment work itself In the research lab and the intensive course approaches the pre-paration activities can be seen as a part of the pre-production of the game and therefore these preparations directly affect the end results of the course The teachers have to follow the students work throughout the course and coach them as needed The success of this task depends on the activity and skills of the students

Lesson 5: Pre-production and production steps were emphasized during the

projects, but the whole production cycle was done Although the main goal of our courses has been on teaching game production related issues, not game production itself, it is important to know which parts of game production the presented approaches teach If we compare the workflow models of each teaching approach and generic game production models, we can see that the activities of the pre-production and production phases are emphasized However, all the most charac-teristic activities of game production models are included in the course structures

in one way or another The only significant part that was missing from our courses was the business aspect of game production It can be said that the basic activities of a non-commercial small scale game project are the same as the activities of a large scale commercial game project Only the scale is different Therefore the previ-ously presented teaching approaches give students a good insight into actual game production

In addition to the production phases, the taught production disciplines are another important factor to be considered As mentioned before, basically all acti-vities of a game production have been done in a small scale during the courses and therefore all disciplines of game production are covered, from digital arts to soft-ware technologies The emphasis between the disciplines is adjustable via the course objectives and needs Alas, the teachers have to set the main focus of the course and understand that the student may not have excellent skills in each necessary discipline

Three Approaches Towards Teaching Game Production 17

Lesson 6: Game production teaches skills that can be used outside the game

production domain Yet another issue to be considered is how well the skills learned using the presented approaches can be generalized outside the domain of game production During a game production course, software engineering students can deepen their knowledge of the software engineering issues, since the game pro-duction process resembles the general software engineering process so much The skills obtained are also applicable to other kinds of software projects besides game production The multidisciplinary nature of game production teaches the software engineering students that during software projects there are lots of other things to

be taken into consideration other than just programming the applications

The multidisciplinary nature also makes the game production project more challenging to manage but at the same time makes concepts like project roles and release integration more concrete for the students From this perspective it can be said that game production assignments are good all-around project management and team work practice

The comparison done between the game production models and the software product development model in the introductory chapter reveals that game produc-tion is actually a product development process rather than just a software engi-neering or art production process This means that the end result of the process is a complete package which can be more easily evaluated than an individual algorithm demo or a prototype application At the same time the starting requirements have

to be set more carefully and end-user needs have to be taken into consideration throughout the process This finding might at least partially explain other lessons presented in this chapter

8 Conclusions

In the computer game industry a production project binds together many tives and disciplines by inventive balancing of conflicting interests Because the balancing decisions culminate in the game product, game creation is a holistic process In other words, it is not possible to isolate the disciplines such as digital art and software technology assets, project activities (e.g., requirement management, risk management, budgeting, resource allocation, prioritization, quality assurance, and motivation), productization, product line management (i.e., strategic business decisions on products), and marketing from each other without losing a realistic representation of the game development However, due to time and budget limita-tions game creation education cannot take into account all of these perspectives at the same time

perspec-Instead of being content with mock-up projects where some of the production perspectives are just ignored, we have identified three project schemas used in the software development industry that also suit to student projects The traditional assignment course emphasizes game production work, the research laboratory course

18 T Mäkilä et al

focuses on technological design and implementation of a game, and the intensive production course weight collaboration among selected game disciplines (in our case digital art and software technology) These three case schemas demonstrate that it is possible to arrange game projects for students that have both educational goals and reflect the projects in the software industry in general There are game production models as well as general software product development models that support this observation The successful injection of the educational goals into the game projects

is also well-founded; the details are discussed in (Hakonen et al 2008)

The three game project schemas include much software technology work because computer games are always executable programs, and hence, the software platform runs the game content We utilize this relationship to give the project adaptations concrete form and to determine the consequences For example, there are tried practices for estimating how much time certain software implementation work takes From a study topic aspect the reason is that we have wide know-how

on how to implement the game technicalities (Smed and Hakonen 2006) However,

it is a misconception to believe that the essence of a computer game comes from technological solutions The game must have an intriguing end-user experience (entertainment, education, or of any other kind) that is only obtained by creative content and playability Both the teachers and the students of the Digital Arts divi-sion lead the development on this front

To sum up, the teaching of game production requires that the teachers jointly understand the practicalities of the computer game domain, education methods, software development projects in general, and the ludic values of game playing Thus they can provide the students with an enlightening experience of, not only game production, but also general software production and modern teamworking practices

References

Chandler, H M (2006) The Game Production Handbook Game Development Series, Charles

River Media

Hakonen, H (2006) Game Industry versus Software Industry: Similarities and Differences In

Hakonen, H., Mäkilä, T., Smed, J., & Best, A (2008) Learning to Make Computer Games: An

Academic Approach TUCS Technical Report 899, Turku Centre for Computer Science,

Finland

Hohmann, L (2003) Beyond Sofware Architecture – Creating and Sustaining Winning

Solu-tions Addison-Wesley Signature Series, Addison-Wesley Professional

Larsen, S (2002) Playing the Game: Managing Computer Game Development Technical

Report International Edition Version 1.1 Blackwood Interactive

Manninen, T., Kujanpää, T., Vallius, L., Korva, T., & Koskinen, P (2006) Game Production

Process – A Preliminary Study Technical Report v1.0 Ludocraft/ELIAS-project

Smed, J & Hakonen, H (2006) Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games UK, Chichester:

John Wiley & Sons

A Tuominen (Ed.), New Exploratory Technologies 2006 (pp 124–132) Salo

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game

Mikael Lebram, Per Backlund, Henrik Engström and Mikael Johannesson

University of Skövde, School of Humanities and informatics

P.O Box 408, SE-54128 Skövde, Sweden

Firstname.lastname@his.se

environment developed in collaboration with the Swedish Rescue Services Agency (SRSA) The learning objectives for the game relates to training of firefighters for Breathing Apparatus Entry, and in particular to develop systematic search strategies The hardware and software system is based on off-the-shelf computer components

in combination with tailor made units The game has been developed as a Half-Life

2 mod – extended to be played in a cave using 5 standard gaming PCs in a local area network The game environment is a cave where the player is surrounded by four 80” screens giving a 360 degree view of a virtual world Each screen is pro-jecting a fixed-angle view of the virtual world and the player’s orientation in the virtual world corresponds to her orientation in the real world A novel interaction model has been developed for the game in order for it to be played in the cave The player navigates and performs game actions using course body movements which are captured through a set of sensors

1 Introduction

Simulator training is becoming more and more common and is used in a number

of situations Recently, there is a movement towards utilizing computer games and computer game technology to achieve adequate functionality for, e.g., training (Zyda 2005; Squire and Jenkins 2003; LoPiccolo 2004; Backlund et al 2006) This effort is commonly referred to as serious games (Serious Games Initiative 2007) Even though serious games may have many applications training is considered to

be a major one Consider the following usage scenario

training session Wearing his boots, coat and air mask he enters the cave to meet his virtual instructor Steve receives his mission via the air mask radio unit He

is instructed to search the premises and save all victims The hallway is filled with thick smoke and Steven has to take a low position to see below it From the crouching position he can orientate himself to see that there are three doors, one

© Springer Science + Business Media B.V 2009

Steve is in training to become a firefighter He is just about to start a simulator

19

Abstract: This paper presents the architecture of a game-based training simulator

M Kankaanranta and P Neittaanmäki (eds.), Design and Use of Serious Games, 19–31

20 M Lebram et al

on each wall, apart from the one he just entered Remembering his tactics he chooses to open the first door on his right and enters the bathroom Still crouch- ing, he finds the room empty and checks that there is no one in the bathtub Steve returns to the hallway and continues his search to the right to find the bedroom The bed is on fire and he moves along the wall, searching behind furniture and in closets He finds an unconscious man in the far end of the room and lowers the fogfighter nozzle to pick him up Steve sees that the fire is increasing in strength and that his stamina is decreasing to a critical level He has to get out quickly in order to gain health The instructor asks him whether the search is completed Steve remembers the third door and reenters the apartment

After the mission Steve enters the virtual debriefing room with an information board and an overview of the apartment The assignment is evaluated and the areas covered by the search are highlighted Steve gets feedback from the virtual instructor and the mission is summarized on the information board

In this paper we present the architecture and software solution for a game based firefighter simulator based on a commercial computer game and computer game technology Our solution implements an advanced game based simulation, with a novel interaction mode, to be played on multiple screens (i.e in a cave) which can

be used for training and simulation The utilization of standard off the shelf ware has produced a cost-effective solution in a relatively short time The game itself has been developed in close cooperation with the Swedish Rescue Services Agency in order to guarantee accurate content and relevant scenarios

It is the addition of pedagogy (activities that educate or instruct, thereby imparting knowledge or skill) that makes games serious However, he also stresses that peda-gogy must be subordinate to story and that the entertainment component comes

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game 21

first In our work we define serious games as games that engage the user, and tribute to the achievement of a defined purpose other than pure entertainment (whether or not the user is consciously aware of it) A game’s purpose may be formulated by the game’s designer or by the user her/himself, which means that also a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) game, used for non-entertainment pur-poses, may be considered a serious game The desired purpose, i.e a serious game, can be achieved through a spectrum ranging from the mere utilization of game technology for non-entertainment purposes to development of specifically designed games for some non-entertainment purpose or the use and/or adaptation of com-mercial games for non-entertainment purposes We also propose that any combi-nation of the above would constitute a feasible way to achieve the desired effect Serious games can be applied to a broad spectrum of application areas, e.g military, government, educational, corporate, and healthcare A question of inter-est concerns the claimed positive effects of such games, or of applications from related and sometimes overlapping areas such as e-learning, edutainment, game-based learning, and digital game-based learning In addition to obvious advantages, like allowing learners to experience situations that are impossible in the real world for reasons of safety, cost, time, etc (Corti 2006; Squire and Jenkins 2003), serious games, it is argued, can have positive impacts on the players’ development of certain skills We also note that some of these positive effects of gaming are not necessarily associated with any specific training or information objectives As dis-cussed by Mitchell and Savill-Smith (2003) analytical and spatial skills, strategic skills and insight, learning and recollection capabilities, psychomotor skills, visual selective attention, etc may be enhanced by playing computer games Lager and Bremberg (2006) have summarized studies of the effects of playing computer games and indicate positive effects on motor and spatial skills More specific posi-tive impacts have been reported, e.g., by Enochsson et al (2004), who found a positive correlation between experience in computer games and performance in endoscopic simulation by medical students The better performance of gamers is attributed to their three-dimensional perception experience from computer gaming The positive effects of games may hence be further utilized if we can identify the correct content and accurately exploit the user’s experience as a driving force for developing serious games Swartout and van Lent (2003) identify the areas of experience-based systems and experience based education as potentially benefit-ing from such a game-based approach The general idea is to influence users by exposing them to some type of experience Even though gaming is not a replace-ment for simulation it may well serve as a complement in some regards (Sawyer 2005) In this sense we find the intersection between gaming and simulation to be

con-an interesting one The goal is hence to retain the immersion con-and motivating tors by means of a game element and to utilize computer game technology as a cost effective way to achieve the capacity of a mid range simulator (Lebram et al 2006) In particular, game based training simulators (i.e serious games) are feasi-ble when training risky missions in inaccessible or dangerous environments

fac-22 M Lebram et al

2.2 Immersive Visualization

There are several ways of visualizing virtual worlds in order to offer a more immersive experience to the viewer than can be achieved using ordinary computer displays The choice of visualization system depends on in what purpose it shall

be used and, what resources in terms of time, space and finances are available

2.2.1 Head Mounted Displays

The term HMD is used on a category of visualization systems which presents a virtual world directly in front of the viewer’s eyes, via one or two small displays Used with a head tracking system the viewer is able to look at different parts of the world by turning his/her head There are many different types of HMD:s in the market, for instance helmets, goggles, and lightweight glasses There are also a number of features which may be supported by a HMD device, such as stereo-scopic vision, semi transparent displays, et cetera A common property of HMD:s

is, however, relatively low resolution and a small field of view

2.2.2 EVL CAVE

A CAVE is an, usually super computer based, environment for visualization of, and interaction with virtual models and worlds The first CAVE (CAVE Auto-matic Virtual Environment) was developed by Electronic Visualization Laboratory (1991) The purpose was to build a system for scientific visualization, with high demands on performance (Cruz-Neira et al 1993) The original CAVE had three walls, consisting of screens for rear projection, and measures 2.5 × 2.5 × 2.5 meters

On the walls and the floor stereoscopic scenes are presented for a viewer, whose head movements are tracked in order to correct the projection in real time The viewer is also able to interact with the virtual world, for instance by using a special glove

Several variations of CAVE have been built since 1991 One example is the six-sided VR-CUBE which was built at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1998 (Center for Parallel Computers 1998) Here the viewer is com-pletely surrounded by video and audio from the virtual world – in all directions

2.3 Fire Fighter Training

The Swedish Rescue Services Agency (SRSA) is the government authority responsible for the training of fire and rescue operatives All municipal fire and

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game 23

rescue services staff are trained and certified by the SRSA Breathing Apparatus Entry (BAE) is one of the tasks a firefighter has to perform It is of crucial impor-tance that the firefighter can remain orientated with very limited or no vision in a building Traditionally the firefighter students practice search methods with and without smoke in different physical buildings

Training is typically organized to start without smoke where students use a mask with translucent visor This type of training is time consuming and requires flexible buildings The optimal training for BAE search methods would be in an environment with a great number and types of buildings Training would also be more efficient if students could practice individually yet with professional feed-back and evaluation

2.4 Virtual Environments for Fire Fighter Training

As firefighters have to handle extreme tasks there is a continuous need to develop training programs to prepare for such tasks (Lasky 2004) There exist a number of reports of the use of virtual environments for firefighter training in the literature Tate et al (1997) present a study where a virtual environment training system was used to prepare shipboard firefighters for a mission The virtual environment allowed users, equipped with a HMD device, to navigate in a 3D-model of the ex-USS Shadwell fire research and test ship A group of 12 trained firefighters par-ticipated in a study where their performance in a firefighting training mission was evaluated Half the group was offered traditional mission preparation and the other half prepared using the virtual environment The result of the evaluation showed that the second group had a better performance than the group using traditional preparation

In a different study, Julien and Shaw (2003) present a virtual firefighter

com-to command virtual firefighters The fire is extinguished by issuing the correct sequence of commands to the firefighters Perdigau et al (2003) present an appli-cation for managing virtual reality scenarios and their main scenario is a Fire-fighter Training Simulation used for crisis situations training and understanding There are also examples on commercial simulation software used for firefighter training The tactical command trainer is a tool from VectorCommand Ltd (2008) which allows users to train emergency management

The main goal with SIDH was to develop a cave-based simulator game for training BAE The project was carried out by expertise in game development and serious mand training environment which allows its users to inspect a house on fire and

3 SIDH – The Game

24 M Lebram et al

games, in close cooperation with expertise in firefighter training from SRSA The game is not intended to replace conventional training, but rather to be used as a complement with focus on search strategies and ability to orient in unknown premises

The game is to resemble real world BAE in as many aspects as possible This means that the player’s task is to completely search different premises, with higher

or lower complexity of the architecture, and rescue any persons inside It should

be possible to fill the premises with smoke, which, similar to real smoke, should be thinner close to the floor than close to the roof The player should also be exposed to heat and physical and psychological stresses, which are characteristic parts of BAE Furthermore, in respect of the educational purpose, it is crucial to record the player’s actions during a game session for later analysis

To reduce overhead time in the developing process, it was decided that the game was to be developed as a modification of a COTS game In this way, the developers can focus on game content and specific features without first having to create an infrastructure from scratch A feasibility study was committed in order to choose one of three common games - FarCry, Quake2 and Half-Life 2 All candi-dates were successfully modified to run in the cave environment However, due to the realistic indoor environments and the ease of use of the level editor, Half-Life

2 was chosen as a platform for SIDH

3.1 Cave Visualization

The cave is constructed from standard consumer electronics components The purpose is to create a flexible environment for 360 degrees visualizations of for example games and films The four walls are each 160 cm wide and 210 cm high The upper 120 cm of the walls consists of screens for rear projection Each screen

is projected by a standard LCD projector, connected to a PC (Figure 1) These computers are interconnected in an Ethernet network together with another com-puter which acts as a server All five computers are standard gaming PC:s with regu-with an external 5.1 sound card which delivers sound to four loudspeakers, one in each of the corners of the cave (Figure 1)

Half-Life 2 is a multiplayer game which means that there is native network functionality for distributing information about the current state of the game objects When playing a multiplayer game, one of the computers acts as a server responsi-ble for controlling and synchronizing the progress of the game When a server is running other computers in the network are able to connect and thereby become participating instances of the game running on the server

When playing SIDH in the cave, the actual game, i.e the instance responsible for player input and game logic, is running on the server computer The task of the lar graphics cards The internal sound card of the server has been complemented

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game 25

Fig 1 Schematic view of the cave

four client computers is to visualize the game running on the server, why the clients always have to be updated about the player’s position and the state of the world

To achieve this, a native multiplayer feature called spectator mode is used The original purpose of this feature is to make it possible for connected, but non-participating, clients to automatically follow and observe an active player In that manner, the instances of the game running on the cave computers are observers, following the player on the server and hence showing the same view as the server without actually interacting with the game The screens of the cave are however not to be clones of the server screen Instead they should present the world in four different directions, one direction for each screen, with the same origin as the server player In the implementation, the game view is defined by a camera which acts as the eyes of the player (or the spectator) The position and orientation of this camera decides what is shown on the screen By setting the orientation of a client’s camera to a certain fixed direction, the client view will always show the world from that angle, regardless of the player orientation Each view is thus rotated 90 degrees with respect to the adjacent screens To produce the final 360 degree pro-jection in the cave, the FOV (field-of-view) for the cameras were adjusted to 90 degrees This is important since two adjacent views will overlap with a greater FOV value, and with a lesser value all parts of the world will not be visible at the same time

3.2 Interaction Model

One of the goals with SIDH has been to make the player’s interaction with the game as natural as possible The player has to be able to move and look around in

direc-a joystick with direc-a string to pull direc-as Z-direc-axis The Gdirec-ameTrdirec-ak is pldirec-aced centered in the top

of the cave, top down, with the string attached to the fogfighter nozzle (Figure 2)

In this way, the nozzle’s position in 3D-space can be calculated Since there may

be some discrepancy between the direction expected by the player and the lated direction (due to player deviation from the center of the cave), the calculated forward direction is visualized as a marker on the screens

calcu-SIDH also calculates the nozzle’s distance to the floor in order to decide whether the player is crouching (to increase the sight in smoke-filled areas) or not Since a low position is depending of the player’s height, the crouching threshold is dynamically adapted based on the highest nozzle position recorded during a mis-sion The information about the distance to the floor is also used to record so called markings A marking is done by touching the floor with the nozzle, and is an action with different meanings in different phases of the game:

• To start the game in the beginning of a level

• To pick up found victims

• To drop rescued victims

• To confirm a completed search task

One important aspect of the interaction model is to resemble some of the physical strain associated with BAE This is done by using BAE gear inside the cave and

by physical movement to navigate in the game For the player to be able to move inside the cave, a device named Stepometer has been developed The Stepometer

is a gauge that allows the player to move forward in the game by walking or running

on the spot The device consists of two sensors which are attached to the player’s feet Since the interaction is not depending on any fine motor activity at all, it is pos-sible to let the SIDH player play the game using the same equipment as in BAE, i.e coat, trousers, gloves, boots, helmet and air mask Due to the look, feel and smell of the equipment this may be used to increase the player’s sense of realism Since heat has a great influence on both physical and psychological stress during BAE, there was initially a discussion about placing infrared heaters on top of the

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game 27

Fig 2 The string of the GameTrak (top right) is attached to the fogfighter nozzle (bottom right)

NB, only one of the GameTrak’s two controls is used

cave This would result in a realistic heat distribution which would force the player to crouch in order to decrease heat exposure However, the computers and the projectors produced enough heat to make the room uncomfortably hot This temperature and the fact that the equipment preserved the body heat (resulting from the player’s physical effort) led to the decision that adding more heat would

be a disadvantage concerning the entertaining aspects of the game

The air mask (Figure 3) is equipped with a radio receiver through which frequencies used by SRSA, the original radio system is replaced by two budget walkie-talkies The other walkie-talkie works as a transmitter, connected to the inter-nal sound card of the server A slight modification of the software makes it possible

instruc-to direct the voice of the instrucinstruc-tor instruc-to this sound card, while all other sound effects are played back in the regular sound system

3.3 Level Design

included in the Half Life 2 edition The Hammer world editor is a powerful tool Apart from facilities for easy creation and texturing of elementary building blocks such as walls, floors, roofs and ceilings the editor also gives access to a number of fabricated items have facilitated development work by reducing the number of specific models necessary to create for SIDH Furthermore, the editor supports the manipulation of light, sound, smoke and fire to alter environments

tions from the virtual instructor is presented To avoid interfering with the radio

The levels for SIDH have been created in the Hammer world editor which is

fabricated models of humans, furniture and other furnishing items The

pre-28 M Lebram et al

Fig 3 Air mask with radio unit

The game flow is controlled by timers and triggers Triggers are invisible objects which can be used to activate other objects or events such as, e.g., a fire to flare or

a new level to start As an example, a trigger may be activated when the player approaches it All levels in the SIDH game must have a specific set up of triggers and timers to handle the game flow Important elements to game functionality are recycled in all levels, thus reducing the over-head when creating new tracks

13 different levels (Table 1) have been developed in close cooperation with the SRSA There is also a tutorial in which the player gets to learn the game and the interaction mode and two bonus levels The game covers a variety of flats, ware-houses, shops and industry facilities to provide a relevant sample of environments for rescue personnel to train in Each level provides new challenges with respect to size, complexity and smoke The difficulty is also increased by shorter time limits and the degree of harm made to the player by smoke and fire Furthermore, the game provides challenges in terms of unexpected situations, such as victims hid-den in closets, and rooms difficult to locate Other elements of stress are alarms, sirens, screaming victims and explosions

Each level starts with a female virtual instructor introducing the game task The virtual instructor’s voice is personified by an instructor from the SRSA and the texture of the pre-fabricated models has been modified to resemble a real rescue personnel outfit Each level ends in a debriefing room (Figure 4) where the player receives oral and visual feedback concerning his/her result

A level is completed when all rooms and areas have been scanned and all tims rescued within time limit and with preserved player stamina If the result is unsatisfying, the virtual instructor will inform the player of this and the player gets

vic-a new chvic-ance The number of trivic-als on evic-ach level is mvic-aximized to three in order to expose the player to a variety of environments

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game 29 Table 1 The levels of the game and their learning objectives

1 Two-room apartment To get a first contact with the game

5 One-room apartment To look in closets

7 Office space To handle complex corridor architecture, closet

9 Three-room apartment To handle heavy fire, closet and limited time

10 Large apartment To handle extremely limited sight in complex architecture

11 Basement storage area To handle fenced areas filled with junk

12 Four-room apartment To handle doors at unexpected positions

Fig 4 The debriefing room The board presents achieved score and an overview of the premises The bright fields in the map represent areas visited by the player

30 M Lebram et al

When a level is successfully completed the player will get a score based on the proportion of the facilities that has been searched, time spent on the task and whether it was the first, second or third trial If the area covered by the search exceeds 90% the player will be awarded a star bonus which will also generate a bonus score on the following level

4 Concluding Remarks

The main contribution with the presented work is a training simulator developed with relatively simple means SIDH is a cost effective immersive firefighter train-ing game, which, according to personnel and students of SRSA, is entertaining as well as effective regarding learning of the intended tasks Backlund et al (2007)

We have demonstrated the feasibility and usefulness of an architecture for a game based immersive training simulator The novel interaction mode adds to immersion by introducing physical aspects into the game We have also shown that inherent game functionality can be used and extended to create a variety of levels with distinct learning goals The source code has been modified to implement required features and the specialized game flow An example of such a modifica-tion is the player’s health level, which is constantly decreasing when acting in smoke filled areas Furthermore, specific logging functionality concerning the state and the activities of the player has been implemented in order to facilitate after action review The modifications and amendments made to the original sys-tem serves as an illustration of the potential of game-based simulation We have shown that this class of systems has a sufficient capacity to form basis for a train-ing simulator

The success with SIDH is mainly depending on two factors – the close eration between SRSA and HIS and the utilization of common computer game technology During the initial meetings the purpose of the game was discussed from different points of view It was stated that even if it would be possible to simulate every aspect of a BAE operation, which would require a great amount of time and money, it would still be a simulation which cannot replace training in the real world Hence, it was decided that the game should focus on search strategies and the ability to orient in unknown premises These aspects were regarded as the ones which would gain the most from simulator training, due to the limited possi-bility of varying physical premises in the real world Using Hammer world editor

coop-to create premises for SIDH, the architecture options are virtually unlimited

Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank the personnel at the Swedish Rescue

Ser-vices Agency (SRSA) for their advice on the subject matter This work has been financed

through the EU INTERREG IIIC DISTRICT project

Design and Architecture of Sidh – a Cave Based Firefighter Training Game 31

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Human-Centred Design and Exercise Games

Users’ Experiences of a Fitness Adventure Prototype

Antti Väätänen and Jaana Leikas

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Tekniikankatu 1, Tampere, P.O Box 1300, FI33101, VTT, Finland

firstname.lastname@vtt.fi

Abstract: Nowadays, there are advantageous fitness gadgets and measurement

systems available as well as specific fitness and GPS mobile phones on the market This development process has enabled the advancement of new kind of game-like fitness concepts This development means that the design requirements for new exercise gaming concepts become more challenging, and consequently, the chal-lenges for the design thinking increase This paper presents the design process of the Fitness Adventure prototype, based on Human-centred Design (HCD) with some new conceptual tools such as form of life, making the design of the contents

of experiences easier Based on the user feedback and results of the design process

we give practical guidelines for the design of exergames Before introducing the exergame design principles, a short overview of the history of fitness games is introduced

1 Introduction to Game Production

User experience design is a central challenge in developing serious games fore we have to ask in solving concrete design tasks the reflective question what is the right form of design processes Here, we are interested in designing a serious game for late middle aged people using human-centred design tradition Especially,

There-we are going to focus on designing a fitness game and therefore There-we logically call attention to the specific problems in designing such games

Because of currently prevailing styles of life overweight and the lack of exercise are becoming a common problem among all age groups in the Western countries

As commonly known, even a small amount of daily physical activity, such as half

on hour of brisk walking, could help in losing weight and strengthen one’s physical health Maintaining a good ability to walk is known to be as such probably one of the key issues in the prevention of mobility-related disability (Asikainen et al 2006; Van Heuvelen 2000) Physical exercise affects also mental health (Ruoppila 2002)

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34 A Väätänen and J Leikas

It results in a feeling of well-being, with or without a relation to the characteristics

of physical fitness, and increases social capabilities as well

Different levels of physical exercise can have remarkable effects on the tional physical capacity of the aging people For example, the functionality of the cardiovascular system (the oxygen consumption)can be improved with the help of regular exercise Moving from one place to another, e.g., running, cycling, and lift-ing and carrying loads can exceed oxygen consumption Continued exercise has also proved to be an important means of preventing osteoporosis (Asikainen et al 2006; Van Heuvelen 2000) In addition, receiving encouragement and support from a health care expert is known to be important for the aging persons It has been sug-gested that physical activity counselling might increase the involvement in physical exercise (Rasinaho et al 2006)

func-Motivation plays a significant role in the exercise adherence Rather than being

a spontaneous behaviour carried out for fun and challenge, exercise is often accomplished for extrinsic reasons such as improved fitness or appearance (Ryan

et al 1997) However, such extrinsic motives often fail to sustain exercise activity over time Also the intrinsic motivation (such as enjoyment and competence) remains a critical factor in sustained physical activity In this respect, the exercise must be enjoyable and possibly even fun if the person is going to continue with it for any length of time

Although maintaining one’s physical condition and wellness at a good level when aging is important, there are not yet inspiring ways for middle-aged adults to keep fit Solutions of ambient intelligence and mobile technology have now the potential to deliver motivating concepts for exercising and keeping fit Exergames,

in the sense of serious games with wireless sensor technology and mobile devices, can offer one solution to motivate people for keeping up a healthier life style Nowadays, there are successful examples of new physical ways to play and approach the idea of gaming The increasing popularity of fitness gadgets, GPS devices and phones with positioning features paves the way for mobile gaming, as well These mobile and pervasive computing technologies were utilised in VTT’s Exergame project which focused on finding new motivating ways and playful con-tents for exercising (Lampila and Lähteenmäki 2006; Leikas and Lehto 2006; VTT 2008; Väätänen et al 2007) In the Exergame, different game concepts were developed for different target groups Based on the concept creation work, a Fitness Adventure game prototype was developed and evaluated with a group of middle-aged Finnish persons

This paper presents design process of the Fitness Adventure prototype; the storyline, interaction methods, design process and user evaluations Based on the results of this process we introduce user feedback of exergaming and give prac-tical guidelines for the design of exergames The paper also gives an overview of the history of exergames and introduces examples of specific games that are cate-gorised into indoor and outdoor use