This study describes the results of training using a mental-health learning game called “stress management for self-care.” Appropriate awareness of stress-coping among workers was shown to be better after the training than before. In addition, a reduction in workers’ psychological stress response was observed. These outcomes indicate the possibility that training using the “stress management for self-care” game reduces workers’ psychological stress response and improves appropriate awareness of stress-coping among them.

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This paper proposes an interface for supporting the post-match play-by-play analysis of one-on-one fighting games. It is based on the relationship between the players' eye movement and the characters' positions. In the previous study, an interface had been proposed based on absolute position of players' eye movement on the game screen, but did not include the relative position of the same. By extending the previous method, it constructs a visualization system that emphasizes on the relationship between the positions of the characters and the players' eye movement. This paper shows the effectiveness of the system through subjective experiments.

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Mobile game development is growing in scale, and the number of developers working on one title is increasing. Since agile is used in large-scale projects in games, the ability to study specifications across multiple fields is becoming more important. Therefore, I held a workshop at Ideathon with the aim of experiencing cross-disciplinary specifications. The requirements for applying Mind Map to group work for this purpose, evaluation methods, and workshop design requirements such as student composition are not yet clear, so I will examine them in this paper.

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Learning computer programming can be difficult at times. Then, we have proposed and developed a Trading card game (TCG) style, supported by a narrative mode of a thought expresser, can be used as a tool to support learning of a beginner of programming skills. In this study, several concepts of programming languages, such as variables, calculations, and control structures, have been developed in a programming environment with a TCG-like interface that can generate the source code for Arduino. Unreal Engine 4 was used to develop the environment. All programs in the built-in examples section of Arduino can be generated by the system with concept of variables, calculations, and control structures. An Arduino Uno R3 board can be programmed in the developed environment, without using a standard Arduino integrated development environment (IDE) or an official Arduino Web Editor.

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A eye-gaze input device may be used to use the intention transmitting device. Although the input efficiency is better than the conventional input method, it is a little difficult to handle because it is a non-contact input method. Therefore, basic gaze operation training is required to use the communication device by eye-gaze input. There is a method to get used to the eye-gaze input by playing a simple game, but it is not certain whether the character input that is the final goal of communication can be input by training. Therefore, there is a problem that the timing for shifting from training to character input is unknown. Therefore, we have developed an app that objectively evaluates eye-gaze input operation skills. It is possible to clarify the timing of the transition to character input by visually presenting functions that are considered necessary for use of the intention transmission device by eye-gaze input such as gaze and follow-up. This paper quantifies the eye-gaze input skill in the developed eye-gaze input evaluation game, and describes the presence or absence of correlation with character input.

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[in Japanese]

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We created a bibliographic data through the cataloging video games. The data model is built on functional requirements for describing the bibliographic universe based on the characteristics of the presentational form. The created data has been converted to Linked Open Data from the bibliographic record using converters developed in Python. The data is useful for various searches and analysis by SPARQL queries. This study shows the outline of the data structure and the process of creation. Then, the effectiveness of the data is verified by showing examples of analysis for research utilization in this paper and the workshop. In addition, the requirements for research use will be clarified through discussions with participants on potential and expandability.

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In this presentation, I discuss the challenges of using heterogeneous data sources in game culture research. Drawing on the experience of two projects, “Data-based infrastructure for global game culture research” (diggr) and “Japanese Visual Media Graph (JVMG),” which both aim to make existing data useful for game culture research, I present several examples of how data can be used and what problems arise in the process. Reviewing the ways in which we have dealt with these problems, I develop a vision for a data-centered research infrastructure from a humanities perspective.

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As a practical example of open data related to video games, the status of “Game Evaluation Bias Index” is reported. The data has been compiled as basic data for international cultural research on games, and has been progressively improved as open data. We will report on what measures have been taken to increase the value of open data, what results have been achieved, and what challenges have been achieved.

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[in Japanese]

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This presentation introduces the purpose, background, features, significance, and outline of “Introduction to Digital Game Research” (Minerva Publishing), scheduled to be published in the spring of 2020. It briefly discusses why and in what context this book was created, what features and significance this book has, and what the outline of each chapter is.

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This spring, “Introduction to Digital Games Research: From Report Writing to Paper Writing” (Minelva Publishing) will be published. This book is for students who want to write an academic paper on the subject of digital games and pop culture. While editing this book, we greatly reflected the experience of the editor who wrote the thesis on manga. In this presentation, I would like to share the current state of popular culture research and academic book publishing while explaining the purpose and background of the project.

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Few university faculty members have experience in teaching graduation research on games, so little is accumulated or shared in teaching know-how. In addition, due to the prejudice of games in society, other faculty members often raise questions about whether games are suitable for research. In this paper, we report on the actual teaching of students in social sciences based on the practice of Koyama Laboratory at Shibaura Institute of Technology, and aim to share the teaching know-how.

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As digital game research field is a fairly new and interdisciplinary, sometimes it is difficult to teach to students how to academically approach to it. It is desirable that a student's research theme and an research approach match the background of his/her supervisor, but this is not always the case. Under these circumstances, publish of “Introduction to Digital Game Research” will contribute to the further development of digital game research in Japan for its comprehensive and practical approach embracing interdisciplinary nature of the research field.

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The video games industry has emerged as cultural and social dominance among the many forms of entertainment media. Video games have long facilitated international exchanges, with technologies and narratives merging to result in ludic and narrative experiences enjoyed worldwide. Dr. Bowman will discuss his experiences working across cultural and geographic barriers, sharing best practices for scholars hoping to more deeply and successfully engage high-impact venues for their game studies scholarship. These best practices include presenting and writing for international audiences, conducting research simultaneously in multinational contexts and locations, translating common and emerging research materials for global deployment, incorporating cultural lessons into purpose-made video game designs, and others. Following a presentation of best practices, he will also field questions as a current and former journal editor, grant reviewer, conference organizer, and academic book editor. DiGRA Japan participants are strongly encouraged to bring questions and discussion points to this highly interactive session aimed at helping us all play better in a global context.

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The choice of tools in developing a game has a significant effect on the game's perfection and talent collection. However, the tools used in each game are not aggregated unless the tool maker uses them as advertising. In this research, we investigated the frequency of using tools from the lecture information at CEDEC 2019 and analyzed the results.

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In this research, We examine the exhibition of Digital games on japanese Museum. The participants and the exhibitors of the exhibition in the Game 's exhibition were investigated.The feature of the contents of the exhibition of each specialized fields were clarified by the analysis of the exhibition contents by the exhibitors.

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The concept of Mata-AI and AI director developed in game industry. They are AI to control a whole game. Meta-AI controls all components in game, and AI Director controls only characters. But their history and definition were not described ever. The result of research of their historical formation of concept of Meta-AI and AI Director and their definitions are shown.

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In 2018, the global esports market reached $ 8.65 billion. However, the size of the esports market in Japan was 4.83 billion yen, which is lower than the global esports market size. The United States, Europe, South Korea, and China are called esports advanced countries, but Japan is often described as a developing esports country. In this study, we looked at the Japanese esports industry through comparison with each countries. In conclusion, the slow development of the esports industry in Japan is due to the lack of a system. Because there were no companies, organizations or communities that could build the system. Taylor (2018) writes that there are three waves in the industrial development of esports. The first wave is “Game”, the second wave is “Sport”, and the third wave is “Media Entertainment”. We think that the second wave “Sport” has come to Japan.

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Recent years have witnessed the rise of an eSports market outside of personal computers. However, these forms of “latter-eSports” are often not considered “real” eSports. Thus, further insight into estrangements between the definition of eSports and the social consensus on “real eSports” is essential. Accordingly, this investigation chose Nintendo, a company that has relationships with eSports that have been described as “odd” by Western mass media, and collected chat data from the Nintendo World Championships on streaming media. A qualitative analysis was conducted based on the method of Ethnography and Virtual Worlds and research in game studies, also inspired by both gender studies and sports studies. The results evinced three ideologies: Machismo, Athleticism, and Enjoyment among spectators. Different estimations toward eSports were generated to judge games that could be confirmed as “real eSports.” Spectators who held Machismo and Athleticism values used discourse to express strict demands such as the rejection of casual engagement for a game to qualify as an eSport, whereas those with Enjoyment values believed casual engagement in eSports could remove obstacles for expanding the enthusiast community and help establish eSports as a more significant social event.

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This study analyzes consumer awareness of esports based on questionnaire surveys conducted in Japan and China. For the present study, target respondents are selected based on their abilities to list the names of esports athlete. The results reflects the characteristics of how e-sports are developed in China and Japan. Through this research, it was confirmed that there was a significant difference in the status of esports acceptance and impression between Japan and China at least among the respondents. However, it became clear that further generalization would require more extensive research and at the same time more detailed analysis with qualitative analyses.

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Due to its rapid development and wide range of applications, Meta AI has many unorganized parts. This research classifies game designs by investigating and classifying Meta-AI historically and comprehensively. This research reports these classifications in a tabular format and present the results of analyzing the relationship between the classified game designs and the Meta-AI.

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To improve the efficiency of quality assurance and debugging tasks in game development, researches and developments for game test automation utilizing machine learning techniques have been promoted in recent years. In this study, we focus on the application of reinforcement learning to quality assurance tasks such as regression testing and game balancing, and discuss an efficient approach toward solving underlying issues for practical use.

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In recent digital games, the control of characters has become complicated, and behavior trees tend to be adopted as a behavior decision method in character AI. However, it is not easy to create many character AI using behavior tree and adjust behavior well. In the present character AI adjustment, it is a work requiring a lot of labor to adjust based on the result of actually moving the character by AI, and if the adjustment is insufficient, to readjust it. And, it is difficult to find the part which needs the adjustment, especially in behavior tree AI. In this paper, we proposed a method to probabilistically find out a part required for adjustment at carrying out adjustment of behavior tree AI by using Bayesian estimation. In this method, nodes in the middle of behavior tree used for action decision are evaluated using Bayesian estimation.

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Female favorite games are different from male’s. We suggested that female evaluates the game before playing it. And female judges whether she wants to play it or not. However, the reason is not clear. Therefore, we conducted a quantitative survey on willingness to play in digital games. As a result, it revealed female players have highly willingness to play for colorful games. In addition, female players reduce willingness to play for realistic games. There are different from male players.

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The effectiveness of digital games as cognitive training for the elderly has been verified, and esports teams for the elderly are active overseas. Therefore, this study conducted a course to learn esports for elderly people who do not play digital games on a daily basis in order to examine whether esports are acceptable for the elderly. We asked them to answer questions about their interest and willingness to participate in esports. As a result, interest and eagerness to participate in esports increased after attending the course than before. They also stated that they were worried about the rules and operations of the game when starting e-sports, but said they would like to try it if there were someone who would teach them or a friend who played with them. These results suggest that it is possible for older people to work on esports if they have the opportunity to learn e-sports appropriately and provide a system to support participation.

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This study examined the familiarity of esports in the university students. The results showed that female students were less interested in esports as a player and an audience than male students were. It is argued that further public information about esports is needed especially toward females.

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Regarding the occurrence of JRPG's unique game design and the charactaristics of it, the discussion analyzed the game stories of three RPGs released from 1993 to 1994 (Shin Momotaro Densetsu, FF6, EarthBound) and their rival characters with uniqueness. From the analysis, a hypothetical construction was considered. In conclusion, it can be argued that the characteristic property of JRPG is game design, in which game’s properties depends on game scenarios, and that it was already sprouting around the fourth generation game machine, which had great restrictions on movies etc.

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Players drop out game playing when the game is too difficult and could not achieve. But some players play repeatedly until to succeed even if the game is so difficult. We implemented the testing game and conducted an experiment on the difficulty and the failure repetition. As a result, majority of players who dropped out less than 10 times repetition. And not less than 10 times repetition players had short repeat interval. On the other hand, more than 20 times repetition players did not drop out until to succeed. It suggested that players who repeat until success have strong engagement to the game, and the degree of this engagement can measure at repeated intervals.

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Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), a type of deep learning, can learn features from a large amount of images and generate new images according to the features. We studied a method to automatically generate the stage of a dot picture based 2D action game using GAN, and resolved the haze and object collapse that occurred in the generation result. In addition, we played the generated stage with AI and compared it with the original stage. In this study, the stage created by GAN was made to play by the person, and the impression about the game was investigated using the questionnaire.

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Addiction to video games is a serious issue to society, the gaming industry, and to the individuals dependent on video-game play. However, to what degree is an individual’s inherent proclivity to act, think, and feel certain ways (i.e., their personality) responsible for gaming addiction and detrimental correlates of gaming addiction (e.g., depression, work performance)? This meta-analytic study synthesizes the gaming addiction literature to determine the degree to which personality variables are related to gaming addiction and the degree to which gaming addiction relates to well-being and performance outcome variables. This study then examines which variables are relatively more important in explaining variance in individual’s well-being and performance-related behaviors: personality, or gaming addiction. We find that Big Five and other personality traits are significantly related to gaming addiction. We also find that gaming addiction is significantly related to lower levels of mental health, while its relationship to school performance is equivocal. Finally, we find that personality is a relatively more important at explaining variance in these outcomes than gaming addiction is, thereby suggesting that video games to some degree might be a form of coping or “self-medication” for individuals who are already prone to mental health challenges to begin with.

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Dishonest behaviors such as cheating or glitching in games are ordinarily considered as unacceptable acts that destroy the game's “magic circle;” however, in fact these acts are accepted by many game players, even sometimes expand the boundaries of “magic” and open up new possibilities for fun. In this study, the authors try to shed a new light on the dishonesty in games by using Ariely's (2012) “fudge factor theory.”

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SGLM (Serious Game-based Learning Materials development method) considers theory of teaching material construction and element of game construction based on SGDP (Serious Game Developing process). SGLM was used in a game design class at a university. In this article, we report on the results of the lesson using SGLM and the feedback received from users.

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Students of Department of Media Arts and Design learn design and systems strategies through specialized courses related to visual design, 3DCG/image design, games & systems designing and communication & business designing. Students strive toward their goals and acquire practical knowledge and technological skills related to these two types of thinking as well as problem-solving abilities based on the knowledge and skills they acquire. This is a report on the contents of a practical game development education program by team production newly introduced by the department in 2014.

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Serious Game Jam has been held eight times from 2014 to 2019 to raise awareness of serious games in Japan. In this paper, we describe the lessons learned from the eighth Serious Game Jam (SGJ8) which was held in Dec. 2019 in Tokyo. In SGJ8, number of participants were 25 from three countries, they organized 5 teams and they have developed 5 serious games. We have based on the same process that we have performed in the SGJ7, but we have found several issues to be revised in the future serious game jams. This paper summarizes the lessons learned from our experience of SGJ8.

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The purpose of this presentation is to consider measuring the effectiveness of using serious games. When using a game for the purpose of solving a certain problem which in fact already happening, it is obviously important to measure the game effect in order to understand if the result would really contribute to solve a current problem. In this presentation, the format of the evaluation will be considered by examining a review of papers on the effects of serious games.

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This paper reports on the development and evaluation of simultaneous participation games used by students in a 200-person multi-person lecture at a university. One of the games we developed was that the icon displayed on the screen moved forward each time the student solved the task during class time, and the other was to use the camera to The image is displayed on the screen, and when the student raises his hand, the effect is applied there.

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In this study, I confirmed the effects of consumer satisfaction with services and products on loyalty, the mediation effect of gamification, and the effect of desire for praise. Both high user group and low user group of praise desire, the effect of “service satisfaction” on “service continuation intention” showed a significant mediation effect on the whole “psychology from gamification”.

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Preschool children with severe disabilities have difficulty reading, writing, and expressing their will because of physical disabilities. Depending on the living environment, there are few successful experiences and it is difficult to shift to learning because cognitive ability is not evaluated correctly. As measures, in recent years, there has been a great deal of progress from acquisition of causal relationships to learning using gaze input. In this paper, we focus on learning using gaze input, and propose a method that performs the following three steps. First, the causal relationship for the PC / tablet is acquired, and then the optional switch and gaze operation are acquired. Finally, the goal is to acquire communication using hiragana and characters. There are three components of this game: acquisition of operations using game characteristics, objective evaluation of the cognitive surface by heat maps, and quantitative evaluation of gaze operations, etc. In this paper, as a result of using the game, the improvement of the gaze control skill and the effect of voluntary efforts are described.

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In Japan, learning English is an important skill even after the graduation of school. Therefore, we have proposed and developed methods of learning materials for serious game learning that combines learning and games. However, there was a problem found in the existing serious game FishyFishy, which only has English to Japanese vocabulary learning function. In order to further increase the number of users in the future, as additional learning functions, we have added a Japanese to English and English to English vocabulary learning function and a pronunciation confirmation function. We will report on the overview.

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In the classroom, music teachers think the content of the lesson from scratch every time, and teach music to kids with a textbook and real musical instrument. As a result, teachers spend a many time preparing for classes, and there is a problem that the burden on preparing for class increases. In order to achieve this goal, we have developed a serious game named “XyloStories” in 2019. But in “XyloStories”, the performance of the system was not adequate, which means that the latency of the key touch to the movement is significant. In order to solve this problem, we developed “XyloStories2” which improving the performance of “XyloStories”. This serious game can reduce the burden on the teacher with combine game and musical instrument by through the Arduino.

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Games have structural repetitions based on rules. This repetition is classified into “Fun” and “Job” depending on the player, and there are individual differences in the judgment criteria. We conducted qualitative and quantitative surveys on repetition during the game to clarify the difference between “Fun” and “Job”. As a result, two facts were suggested. Recognition as fun is repetition that has a sense of agency and leads to achievement. What is recognized as job is repetition that cannot be controlled.

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Games could not only play but also watch the game play videos to enjoy. However, a purpose of watching video is different from each user. We conducted a qualitative survey on the reasons for watching game play videos. As a result, it revealed five elements in which “Degenerate strategies”, “Think played”, “A fan of the commentator”, “Follow trends” and “Enjoy talks”.

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In this study, we developed a simulation system for evacuation behavior during the tsunami on the coast of Fujisawa Cityusing a game engine. Agents performing evacuation behavior autonomously are placed on a model of the coastal area of Fujisawa City created using the GSI's open data. Agents have two types of evacuation behavior and three types of age attributes. Simulate the evacuation behavior to the designated evacuation site given each. A tool that can be used as basic information when creating a hazard map by clarifying places where disaster victims concentrate or where it becomes difficult to pass It is thought to be. As a result of the simulation, it was confirmed that there were places where victims were concentrated not only in coastal areas but also in inland areas where the sea level was low, especially in rivers.

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In order to know a celestial body, a star chart disk and a planetarium are used, but these are universes as spherical surfaces viewed from the earth, and it is impossible to three-dimensionally understand the relative sense of distance between the celestial bodies. Therefore, we created a teaching material to capture celestial bodies three-dimensionally by arranging stars in a three-dimensional virtual space. In this study, we developed a system that can freely move in large-scale space using the game engine Unreal Engine 4 as a development environment. This system is capable of viewing space in three dimensions using a head-mounted display. By grasping the arrangement of the stars and constellations seen from the earth in three dimensions, it has become possible to intuitively grasp the relative distances of stars, etc., which are difficult to understand by the information of the star chart disk and the planetarium. In addition, since the users can move freely in outer space, it is not just a material for appreciating universe, but a content that users can operated and enjoyed by themselves.

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As part of the pursuit of natural feedback in the game, we have developed a controller that can simulate weight using the gyro effect generated by a rotating body. In order to create a clearer gyro effect, the size is such that the operation requires the entire arm instead of the fingertip. In this paper, we use a controller that we have created to play a game created in Unity with a subject, and give a simple questionnaire about the obtained experience.

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Regarding the sound effects of the game, it is known that the flow is not affected even if the sound timing is shifted, and the flow is significantly higher in some cases with and without sound effects know. On the other hand, when the sound effect itself is not suitable, no study has been made because it is difficult to determine what sound effect is not suitable. However, in the real world, there are already commonly used sounds depending on the situation. Therefore, in this paper, we conducted a quiz as an example in which two situations can be imagined only by sound, verified that the sound and the situation were interchanged, and verified using sound effects that are not used for the quiz, and determined which sound effects are not suitable for the game Investigate whether it gives such discomfort and stress.

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