Recently, vacant houses have been increasing all over the country. It is difficult to sell or utilize vacant houses filled with large amounts of household goods and personal effects. Due to their significant deterioration and unsanitary conditions, such vacant houses are more likely to be designated as “Specified Vacant Houses”, which are subject to administrative guidance or enforcement action by local authorities. Therefore, it is important to encourage citizens to clean up and dispose of unnecessary items before their homes become vacant. As part of a joint study with Fukushima prefecture Kitakata City, this study developed three serious games—a simulation game, an action game, and an electro-mechanical game— to be useful for awareness activities for the prevention of vacant houses. They were designed as games that could be quickly and easily enjoyed at local events. Additionally, by developing versions for adults, children, and seniors, they became effective tools for our awareness activities across all age groups.

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This study examines the factors that influence player selection tendencies of companion characters in video games. Using an experimental approach with university students as participants, we recorded the selection behaviors of both protagonist and companion characters through a custom-developed experimental game. The reasons for character selection were collected through questionnaires administered during the experiment. By combining the obtained in-game behavioral data and questionnaire results, we conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses.

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International sporting events are widely reported when good results are achieved under the auspices of government and business support, pointing to an increase in the sporting population. However, empirical studies of this causal relationship are limited. This study quantitatively examines the effect of national team performance on the playing population for e-sports. We use the difference-in-differences method, which takes advantage of the unpredictability of athletes' performance as a quasi-experiment and exploits differences in the playing population between countries that performed well and those that did not. We used data from Google Trends as a proxy measure of playing population. The analysis revealed that a national team win increased the player population by approximately 10%, but the effect disappeared after 20 days. This study contributes to the policy, research, and business communities as a rare empirical finding on sports populations.

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This study proposes a framework for analyzing game characters using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), developed by the WHO. Using Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII as a case study, the framework visualizes his body functions, activities, participation, and environmental factors. This enables an evaluation of the character’s realism of life functions and internal consistency. Furthermore, a prototype is introduced that links ICF scores to game parameters, demonstrating the potential role of occupational therapists (OT) in character creation.

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This session introduces the development of a game set in Metaverse Gifu Castle, a project commissioned by Gifu City. This game development was a collaborative effort between NHK Art, Inc., International Professional University of Technology in Tokyo, and Japan Electronics College. The game is a stealth game staged on the recreated mountaintop area of Gifu Castle as a Fortnite island. We used Unreal Editor for Fortnite to create various elements, including traps that obstruct the player's path and NPC samurai acting as guards.

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This study reports on the development of a sugoroku-style digital game designed to deepen students’ understanding of university life and promote natural interaction among new students. The game is played simultaneously by six teams per class and consists of a main sugoroku game themed around university life, as well as several mini-games that can be enjoyed with simple one-button controls. The main game is designed to allow players to learn about university life while playing, and the mini-games incorporate mechanisms that encourage interaction through cooperation and competition between teams. The development was led by students, with an emphasis on balancing gameplay enjoyment and effectiveness as an orientation tool.

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In recent years, gamification has come to be positioned as a method for increasing learner engagement. Engagement, an educational psychological concept, has been attracting increasing attention in recent years in the field of language education, where the author is based. The means of stimulating and maintaining task engagement in this field overlap in many aspects with what has been discussed in the field of gamification. This research focuses on this point and discusses the development of a template to support the design of gamification to increase learner engagement by matching the two.

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In this presentation, we will share our practical experience using vibe coding in digital game production and discuss its potential in game developer education. Analog games are often used in this field of study. This is because the causal relationship between rule modifications and changes in experience can be quickly observed. However, physical constraints such as the number of participants and the environment cannot be avoided when implementing analog games. Game creation using vibe coding has the potential to address these analog game-specific challenges.

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This paper connects “interactivity,” a foundational concept in video game studies, with the notion of “circularity” found in pre–video game theories of play, and clarifies their similarities and differences. It positions the play theories of Buytendijk, Gadamer, and others as “theories of circularity,” and compares them with contemporary definitions of “interactivity” proposed by Smuts, Lopez, and others. On this basis, it identifies as shared elements reciprocal action, the coexistence of controllability and uncontrollability, and dynamically emergent structures. At the same time, it demonstrates the differences between debates on interactivity that seek to delimit what is distinctive about video games and a circular theory of play oriented toward philosophical applications.

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This study proposes a method of repurposing children's craftworks—originally made from household waste materials—as physical game controllers for digital games. By doing so, it aims to both promote environmental awareness and enhance children's sense of immersion in gameplay. In recent years, arts and crafts in elementary education have increasingly emphasized the use of household waste, in line with rising environmental concerns. However, many of these crafts are discarded after completion, limiting their educational impact. To address this, our method gives these creations a second life as interactive devices. We also examine the effectiveness of this approach in fostering deeper engagement with environmental issues and game-based learning.

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We have independently developed THINKBASE, an RPG-style case study teaching material that allows users to simulate real-world business management scenarios, such as operating a sporting goods store or engaging in sixth-sector industrialization. This tool has been used in direct instruction at several commercial high schools, where it has helped students cultivate logical thinking and presentation skills, leading to awards in various business plan competitions and admissions to local national universities. More recently, the program has been expanded to serve as a corporate training tool for young employees. In this report, we present the outcomes of these initiatives and discuss future challenges, including the development of Gen Z talent and the integration of generative AI.

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This paper presents a case study of “Iwanazo,” an annual interactive mystery-solving game held in Iwamizawa City, Hokkaido, designed to promote regional revitalization through playful engagement with the local shopping district. To address technical and design challenges in delivering game hints and answer input, the project employed no-code web development tools, enabling rapid and cost-effective deployment without programming expertise. A key pedagogical feature was the guardian-mediated hint system, which allowed adults to access web-based hints and support children at their discretion, thereby fostering collaborative learning while preserving the children's sense of achievement. The project also implemented an industry-academia collaboration model, engaging university students in puzzle and illustration creation, which contributed to high-quality content under budgetary constraints. Comparative analysis with other mystery game projects demonstrates that no-code tools can lower technical barriers and support sustainable, community-driven game design. This initiative offers practical insights into the educational, social, and technical affordances of no-code platforms in regional game-based learning contexts.

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The presentation will focus on a prototype system called “R.B.G.,” which combines the National Art Research Center's “Media Arts Database Dataset” and The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.'s “Wikidata” to visualize the relationships among 1,326 works by 617 creators and allows users to shift their viewpoints using hand gestures to grasp the relationship between the works.

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This study adopted “Powerful Pro Baseball” as a baseball eSports and compared visual search strategies during play, primarily through eye movements measurements, among participants with varying levels of expertise: beginners, baseball athletes, and professional eSports athletes. Specifically, based on various eye movements metrics, we verified batting performance and other factors, and significant differences were observed between participant groups and between trials. In particular, it was suggested that baseball experts and professional eSports athletes may employ unique strategies.

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I developed a prototype of an escape game that incorporates ICT knowledge acquired through lectures. Players use both intuition and ICT skills to search for keys and escape from an actual locked classroom within a set time limit.The game is designed to help players review ICT concepts in an enjoyable and interactive way.

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In the early design stage of game development, it is often challenging to conduct task analysis for new game designs that address diverse player needs, making it difficult to visualize potential design flaws or imbalances in the experience structure. To address these challenges, this study proposes an LLM-driven analysis tool capable of analyzing new game designs that respond to diverse player needs. The tool uses GPT-4o to parse natural language descriptions provided by designers, automatically extracting the game flow and associated mechanics. Based on this, it constructs a task tree following the principles of Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) and derives a Gameplay Loop from its branch structure. Furthermore, it applies multiple experience tags—defined by the MDA framework and PXI—to each task node, and visualizes tag distribution and potential structural issues. This enables designers to grasp the overall structure of their game and identify latent problems without requiring a complete prototype.

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This study provides a detailed analysis of storytelling in role-playing games (RPGs). By taking into account the player's play order (Play Time), it visualizes the structure of the RPG narrative as well as the narrative structure actually experienced by the player. This approach enables an evaluation of the balance between the game’s inherent story and the player's unique experience.

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we examined preservation methods in digital archives with the aim of visually conveying the atmosphere and contents of games. Existing digital archive data does not sufficiently convey the essence of the game. To solve this problem, we hypothesized that preservation of gameplay footage can more effectively convey the game-playing experience, and investigated what elements of gameplay footage are suitable for digital archiving.

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