Gaming with Purpose: Heuristic Understanding of Ubiquitous Game Development and Design for Human Computation

Abstract

The emerging growth of digital gaming has resulted in wide audiences of players. These players are capable of solving difficult problems through human computation games while ubiquitous gaming provides play anywhere opportunities to solve those problems. This chapter outlines characteristics of human computation games and ubiquitous games in a variety of disciplines, describing they key components of such solutions and articulating their distinguishing characteristics from other types of entertainment software. The focus is on entertainment software design theory as applied to human computation games. It outlines the fundamental characteristics of such games and offers approaches to applying human computation games to promote player engagement and adopt application. Readers will learn how ubiquitous gaming and human computation can be combined to address the simplest educational goals through the most complicated problems in the sciences. A brief structural analysis of

The Patterns of Games for Leading Social Change

“…Classically this has been a core design intention of human computation games (HCG) and games with a purpose (Von Ahn, 2006). Such games take the work of a game and point them toward tasks for which artificial intelligence systems are not well equipped or for which human error increases as monotony increases (Grace & Jamieson, 2014). The propensities of HCG games are in their ability to employ the play state as an optimal state of work performance.…”

Games as a Catalyst for Design for Social Innovation. Unlocking legendary tools

“…The idea of using games for research is not brand-new (Schrier, 2017b). Citizen science applications with games (Eyewire 2 and Foldit 3 ), crowdsourcing (Schrier, 2016;Grace, 2014) are known examples. There are also alternate reality games like World Without Oil 4 , platforms that develop games for design inquiry such as Foresight Engine 5 and Play the City 6 , or smaller games that are developed for focused group studies (Vervoort, 2015).…”

“…In this era, games are gaining more and more popularity across a wide demographic from very young ages to above 70s. Meanwhile, there has been a growing research into behavioural contexts, socio-cultural stance of games and play (Atkins, 2003;Salen et al, 2004;Sicart, 2014), persuasive games (Bogost, 2007), news games (Treanor, 2009), critical play (Flanagan, 2009), games for change (Swain, 2007;Schrier, 2016;Grace, 2014), and participatory nature of game making for research through design and DSI (Bayrak, 2017). It has been discussed that games as creative artefacts have potential to promote change, suggest empathy and infuse awareness (Flanagan & Nissenbaum, 2014).…”