Handbook of Digital Games

A thorough discussion of the present and future of digital gaming People play digital games for many reasons, from entertainment to professional training, but all games share the same basic characteristics. From those basic parameters, gaming professionals manage to create the enormous variety of games on the market today. The Handbook of Digital Games explores the many considerations and variables involved in game creation, including gaming techniques and tools, game play, and game design and development. A team of recognized gaming experts from around the world shares their thoughts on the different aspects of game creation, providing readers with a deep understanding and insider perspective on the cross–disciplinary aspects of the industry. The fundamentals are discussed, but the emphasis is on emerging theory and technology with topics including: Player experience and immersion, including emotion Automatic content generation and storytelling techniques Collaboration and social information exchange Game aesthetics Simulation of game play and crowds Collision detection Networking issues such as synchronization The book also includes retrospective and ontological examinations of gaming, as well as discussions about mobile game play, spatial game structures, and education–centric gaming. In–game advertising, gender stereotyping, and independent game production are also considered. The Handbook of Digital Games is a robust compilation of the latest information across the entire industry, and a major resource for any gaming professional.

Contributors ix Introduction 1 Marios C. Angelides and Harry Agius Part I Gaming Techniques and Tools 1. Toward the Adaptive Generation of Bespoke Game Content 17 Cameron Browne, Simon Colton, Michael Cook, Jeremy Gow, and Robin Baumgarten 2. Procedural Content Generation 62 Tom Betts 3. Content Generation in a Collaborative Browser–Based Game Environment 92 Juha–Matti Vanhatupa and Janne Lautamaki 4. Automatic Narratives in MMORPGs 111 Hao Wang 5. Collision Detection with Navigation Meshes 130 D. Hunter Hale and G. Michael Youngblood 6. Mass Population: Plausible and Practical Crowd Simulation 146 Sybren A. Stüvel, Cathy Ennis, and Arjan Egges 7. Synchronization in Multiplayer Online Games 175 Stefano Ferretti 8. Exchanging Social Information in Online Social Games 197 Fabrizio Davide, Stefano Triberti, and Francesco Collovà 9. Collaboration through Gaming 235 Damon Daylamani Zad, Marios C. Angelides, and Harry Agius 10. AI for General Strategy Game Playing 274 Jon Lau Nielsen, Benjamin Fedder Jensen, Tobias Mahlmann, Julian Togelius, and Georgios N. Yannakakis 11. Rated A for Advertising: A Critical Reflection on In–Game Advertising 305 Laura Herrewijn and Karolien Poels Part II Game Play 12. Immersion in Digital Games: Review of Gaming Experience Research 339 Paul Cairns, Anna Cox, and A. Imran Nordin 13. Know Thy Player: An Integrated Model of Player Experience for Digital Games Research 362 Malte Elson, Johannes Breuer, and Thorsten Quandt 14. At the Core of Player Experience: Continuation Desire in Digital Games 388 Henrik Schoenau–Fog 15. Empirical Game Aesthetics 411 Chris Bateman 16. Mobile Game Play and Everyday Life 444 Barbara Grüter, Nassrin Hajinejad, and Iaroslav Sheptykin 17. Video Games, Machinima, and Classic Cinema: Meaningful Gaming 471 Pilar Lacasa, María Ruth García–Pernía, and Sara Cortés 18. Video Games in Educational Settings: Developing Skills for New Media Learning 502 Ana Belen García Varela, Héctor Del Castillo, David Herrero, Natalia Monjelat, and Mirian Checa 19. Retro–Computing Community Sites and the Museum 523 Helen Stuckey and Melanie Swalwell 20. From the Deceptively Simple to the Pleasurably Complex: The Rise of Cooperative Address in the History of Video Games 548 Carl Therrien Part III Game Design and Development 21. Emotion in Games 575 Celso M. de Melo, Ana Paiva, and Jonathan Gratch 22. Task Deployment in Three Types of Game Spatial Structures 593 Chuen–Tsai Sun and Sheng–yi Hsu 23. Social Ontology of Digital Games 607 Ivan Mosca 24. Gaming with Purpose: Heuristic Understanding of Ubiquitous Game Development and Design for Human Computation 645 Lindsay D. Grace and Peter Jamieson 25. Beyond Stereotypes of Gender and Gaming: Video Games Made by Middle School Students 667 Jill Denner, Eloy Ortiz, Shannon Campe, and Linda Werner 26. Decade of Game Making for Learning: From Tools to Communities 689 Quinn Burke and Yasmin B. Kafai 27. Designing Interactive Tangible Games for Diverse Forms of Play 710 Tilde Bekker, Ben Schouten, and Mark de Graaf 28. Artisanal Local Networks: Game Work and Culture in Independent Game Production 730 Orlando Guevara–Villalobos Index 751

MARIOS C. ANGELIDES, PhD, is a Professor of Computing in the School of Engineering and Design at Brunel University, UK, a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered Engineer. He holds a BSc and a PhD, both from the London School of Economics (LSE). HARRY AGIUS, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Computing in the School of Engineering and Design at Brunel University, UK, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He holds a BSc in Computing and Information Systems, an MSc in Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems, and a PhD in Multimedia Systems, all from the London School of Economics (LSE).