Discussion (Group)

Group Discussion:

It is believed that educational games can optimize study process by bringing in experiences such as social interaction, environment simulation, virtual world problem solving, collaboration, as well as emotional involvement. In addition, the interactive storyline and the active communication with the game allow students to control their own study pace. Therefore, we seek to develop a novel 3D educational game which will fully adopt the standards and conventions of the current gaming industry.

For the purpose of developing this project, our short-term goal (around one year) is to experiment with the gaming production process by build up an interactive 3D lymph node city. Our long-term goal is to expand (1) the game world from a small lymph node to other parts of the body, (2) single character to multiple characters (3) simple immune responses to complex pathological processes. Eventually, an educational game that encompasses the current standards of the gaming industry will be developed to deliver a rich spectrum of biological information of the human body in an accurate and fun way.

To achieve our goals, we will divide the task of constructing the lymph node city into three parts: interactive application development, 3D character development, and 3D environmental development. As we work to complete these short-term goals, we will be gaining valuable knowledge and skills to expand the extensiveness and intricacy of our project.

Furthermore, we hope that this project will start a new research area for Biomedical Communications Program. This project allows biomedical communication students to explore programming, script writing, storyboard sketching, 3D modeling, 3D animating, and texture technique from a game developer’s point of view. The 21st century has been called a “game era” by some researchers (Lenoard, 2003). Therefore, an educational game has the potential to become an effective didactic tool for its future users.

omg references

Virtual Reality and Education: Information Sources

Vygotsky's Psychology of Play (and childhood development)

Applied Math and Science Education Repository

Geoff's proposal

Objectives

Technical: To acquire skills to model, rig and animate cellular characters for the purpose of 3D gaming.

Theoretical: To explore character design conventions in games as well as educational materials.

Practical: To conceptualize and storyboard a set of characters for an immunology-themed educational game. To model one or two such characters to have it interact with it's environmental surrounding, engage with characters, and respond to scripted cues.

Research Questions

1) How to design a character at the cellular level within a three-dimensional tissue environment? What considerations must a game artist take, and do these considerations change from a biomedical communicator's point of view?

Hypothesis:

• As with animated biomedical visualizations of microscopic or cellular events, true character dynamics are often replaced with a more exaggerated or stylized set of behaviours. For example, cellular collisions may not result in morphological changes in vivo, but on screen, compression and deformation upon impact may appear more realistic and organic (Thomas & Johnston). A consideration during the design process would then be to ensure that the model be able to adopt such characteristics.
• With cell-like characters, polar orientation may affect not only game-play but communication as well. While rolling, bouncing, tumbling characters may appear more realistic, they may not be easily programmable. Whereas a cell with a defined head and foot may be easier to integrate and have it interact with it's surrounding.

How does character appearance and behaviour affect user attraction, useability and playability? Would an anthropologic character be more accessible to a wider audience than organic cell-like characters?

Hypothesis:

• The appearance of a character can greatly attract or deter specific audience groups. Even in the case where two games may adopt the same character, their behaviours and movements, for example one with more bounce and exaggeration versus one with stiffer joints, may greatly affect a game's attractiveness to different people.
• An anthropological character may be more attractive and more relatable to its target audience. Having the option to choose between male and female would attract a greater audience than a single sex-defined one. Must now consider how different sexes or genders may potentially affect interpretation of the seriousness of the game.
• A cell-shaped character may be universally more acceptable because there would inherently be less gender bias. Androgyny, however, may have other limitations.

Does character design affect credibility and communication of scientific material?

Hypothesis:

• Continuing from the previous point, an anthropological character may not only serve to attract a wider audience, it may help to communicate scientific material. Unlike a cell that exocytoses a protein for example, an anthropological character may through a particular protein or weapon. Visually, this action taken by the main character may be more readily registered by a human player who can more easily fathom throwing an object than projecting endocytic contents. In essence, it is like how a professor or educator may make an analogy of a complex biochemical reaction in order to better communicate a point. Visualizing human-like interactions may help users make associations between such biological processes.
• The detractor of using an anthropological character may be a decrease in credibility. Even if much care is taken to render and create a highly accurate biological environments and events, the use of a human-like character may cause viewers to distrust the material.

Does character-appearance customizability and evolution affect replay value? Does appearance morphology and evolution help communicate biochemical or cellular change?

Hypothesis:

• For the purpose of replay, having an expansive character customizability system may serve to promote replay. Users may be enticed to try different outfits, acquire different abilities and assume different roles.
• Ensuring that customizability serves more than to increase replay with be important. Appearance changes may serve to explain morphological changes at the cellular level. Character evolution may help players understand profound intracellular changes that may not be visually evident otherwise.

Can character-environment interactions affect a player's spatial or overall understanding of biochemical and organic processes?

Hypothesis:

• By creating an explorable 3D environment, games can help foster players' spatial skills. By navigation through the world, players can gain an understanding of the anatomical function of an organ. Through event triggers and visual cues, they may then make associate functions with structure.

Methods

(See group methods)

Wensi's proposal

Objective:

Technical: To learn skill design, and to model and animate a dynamic 3D biological environment for 3D gaming project.

Theoretical: To explore conventional scene design for improving learning process of biological knowledge.

Practical: To provide the basic design for the entire gaming map of lymph node; select one scene from the map and sketch it in detail; model subjects in the scene by Maya; finally, organize them by Unity and experiment with more realistic rendering skills.


Research Questions:

(1) How to organize biological information of an anatomical structure (lymph node) in a form of a 3D environment that can be more user-friendly?

Hypothesis:

• Compare to the anatomical structure which contains millions of closely packed cells/molecules with a variety of scale differences, the design of the gaming environment intends to be organized as a city, countryside or other common real life scenes. It is believed that by creating interactions with the real world, it will strengthen the game by building on users’ pre-existing knowledge of their everyday life. (Horn, 2007). For example, the highway with red pavement will indicate blood vessels; the river with clear water will indicate lymph vessels.

• The downside of using real life scenes to mimic anatomical structure of lymph node is that it may decrease the credibility of scientific material. Although the real life scenes can convey the basic concept of each biological components, such using highway to represent blood vessel as a mean to demonstrate the concept of “transportation path,” some information’s accuracy will be lost, such as the scale proportion of different biological components and the real spatial distance between them.

(2) How to enhance user’s understanding of knowledge by designing a 3D environment of the game?

Hypothesis:

• Continuing from previous point, organizing the game environment as real life scenes may increase usability but also decrease the credibility of scientific material. So in order to enhance user’s understanding of the scientific material, the design of the appearance of each component in game will be closely related to its appearance in the real lymph node. Also, the conventional appearances of these anatomical structures in the textbook or other forms of educational materials will be adopted to help users to make the connection between objects in the 3D environment and biological components. For example, B cell could appear as a round shape fruit on the tree.
• To further enhance user’s understanding of the scientific material, the movements/changes of the objects in 3D environment may simulate the real reaction of the biological components in lymph node. This may help the game to deliver the concept of how biological components function in lymph node. For instance, once the B cell, which appears as a round shape fruit on the tree, is activated by the primary antibody, the Y-shaped secondary antibody will pop out from its surface and the fruit will mature, fall from the tree, and roll around to other places.

• Finally, creating the interaction between the main character and 3D environment may enhance user’s understanding of the scientific material. The main character may trigger events such as bringing an antibody to a non-differentiated B cell (immature fruit in the tree) and activate its differentiating process (fruit maturation process). By doing that, user can gain understanding of the cell’s functional mechanism when they are exploring the anatomical structure of the lymph node.

(3) How to balance out the difficulty level and replay value of the game?

Hypothesis:

• As an interactive 3D environment, the complexity may increase the game’s replay value, because it would offer users extra areas to explore while completing the tasks.

• However, the disadvantage of increasing the complexity of the 3D environment is that it may increase the difficulty level of the game, and hence hindering users from completing the tasks. Therefore, the complexity of the game should balance the difficulty level in order to maximize the replay value of the game.

Discussion:
As one of the essential parts of game creation, the game world development provides the venue for characters to interact with the environment as the storyline unveils. Furthermore, as a scientifically educational game, the game’s environment has its unique contribution to users’ learning process. It will help users to remember anatomical structures more easily as they explore the game world, and it will enhance users’ understanding of the scientific mechanism based on the character-environment interaction.

I hope during the designing and developing process of the game world, I can learn to incorporate scientific content into a visually attractive and entertaining realm of accurately depicted scientific facts. In addition, I will also gain skills of game modeling and texture techniques.

Krista's proposal

Objectives

Technical: To acquire a basic understanding of programming languages (html, actionscript, php), sharing documents and interactive applications on the web, and creating user-friendly and accessible applications.

Theoretical: Research into whether interactive technologies can be valuable education tools. Can an interactive encyclopedia make a game more didactic, and credible? What are the merits of informal and experiential learning, and do games have a role to play in this model?

Practical: To conceptualize a game manual that describes rules and concepts of the game; this will also act as an interactive textbook. Create visual images and 2D animations for this application.

Please see Methods section for a goal timeline.

Research Questions

1. How does complexity affect the education or entertainment value of a game? What considerations must designers make, in both the game interface and its content?

Hypotheses:

Simplicity may be more valuable in the interface, as elegant and uncluttered designs are easier to navigate (Mullet and Sano, 1995; Gehrke and Turban, 1999; Tufte, 2006).

When considering scientific content to include, researchers suspect that over-simplification of concepts presented in classrooms negatively affects student learning (Koschmann et al 1996).

Complexity may thus be valuable in the content, and concepts of the game. This may include a complex amount of information embodied by the 3D environment, characters, and in the game manual.

Similarly, individually-tailored curriculums aid learning (Meltzoff, et al 2009), and an application of this could be customizability in the game interface.

2. How can interface design affect a user’s ability to learn? Can games be designed to evoke emotional responses in players, and how does this affect learning?

Hypotheses:

Visually pleasing designs are thought to improve heuristic processing and creativity (Norman, 2003); the aesthetic quality of an educational game may therefore impact learning. Also, emotions are intimately tied to memory (LeDoux, 1996, Frijda, 1988), and research suggests there are many avenues of interaction between humans, their emotions, and computers (Brave and Nass, 2008; Kim et al, 2003).

Customizability and the emotional mood of the game may also affect learning, as people tend to remember mood-congruent information better (Matt et al, 1992).

Persuasion is needed to change student view points, and computer programs are emerging as powerful persuasive tools (Fogg et al, 2008). In order to be persuasive, designs need to be perceived as credible; please see the group literature review, and Stanford's Web Credibility Research for elements that improve credibility.

3. What are the benefits of informal learning? How informal can a game be to be still considered educational? If it’s no longer an ‘educational game’, can the game still ‘teach’?

Hypotheses:

According to Wellington, and many proponents of constructivism, informal learning is embodied by voluntary, haphazard, unstructured, open-ended, learner-led and learner-centred activities that occur outside of the classroom (see Table 1, from Wellington, 1990).

Informal learning may increase student attention, (please see literature review in group proposal for elaboration on how games may affect motivation, can tailor curriculums to a student, increase self-efficacy, and incorporate emotional and social aspects into the learning experience).

The repetitive, and problem-based qualities of games may also make them valuable teachers, as spaced repetition improves recall (Bahrick et al, 2005), and elaborative processing (making deeper connections) improves short-term memory (Craik et al, 1973). Actively solving problems in the game may encourage elaborative processing.

Computer games, as tools in informal learning, may be powerful and cost-effective alternatives to classic, classroom teaching.

4. How can the integration of an encyclopedic module enhance or detract from a game’s playability? Will it be used? And how may its design and usability serve to educate?

Hypotheses:

Game manuals incorporated directly into a game, in the form of interactive encyclopedias (for example, the Civilization games' civilopedia), not only prove anecdotally useful according to game afficianados, but considerable evidence in the literature celebrates their instructive value (Squire, 2005; Squire, 2009; Alvarado, 2008).

Such a tool should enhance the credibility, and playability of the game, by providing accurate scientific references and the knowledge needed to succeed in game challenges.

Methods

Please see methods section in the group proposal.

Discussion

Educational games hold much promise in improving students' learning experiences.

Games may tap into and encourage social, aesthetic, emotional, problem-solving, motivational, esteem, and self-efficacy elements that more formal methods of learning do not. They also represent an economically-efficient way to provide students with a tailored learning experience.

It is my hope that in producing an interactive game manual, researching the elements of effective game design, and working to incorporate accurate, scientific content in a visually pleasing, and entertaining format, I will gain some of the skills needed to contribute to this growing industry.

Methods (group)

KRISTA:

Working out the lymph node environment and character interactions from a game manual perspective. I will be taking Advanced New Media classes on Fridays to become better acquainted with designing interactive applications, basic programming language, and hosting documents on the web.

Mid term goals: Create a storyboard for the game manual. This will include visual images, text, and an idea of the flow of the end product.

End of term goals: Create an interactive game manual. This will include visual images, 2D animations, and text. Write a paper that addresses one of my research questions (see individual proposal), or discusses a major challenge I faced in design and production.

Long term goals (after April): Interface the interactive game manual with a 3D game environment (lymph node city). Training for this may include completing Unity tutorials, and learning to render using Autodesk Maya.

GEOFF:

To design and create 3D characters to interact and function within a biological 3D environment. I will be learning Maya through my offered courses. I will explore character rigging and interaction mechanisms in depth.

(A resource, out of many of possibilities, to consider is "Maya 2008 character Modeling & Animation: Principle and Practices". In the table of contents, they break down character rigging into the following chapter topics: basic rigging and modeling, path animation and dynamics, biped character modeling, biped character rigging, motion animation. Each of these chapters include tutorials. Please see below how I intend to use this resource.)

First 6 weeks: I will be supplementing what I learn in my Maya class by following tutorials on how to model and rig a simple model. The complexity of this model (small number of joints versus full human character) will be discussed and determined.

Mid-term goals: Create a set of character designs for the game. This will include conceptual sketches of the characters, their motions, appearances and morphology. Currently, the intention is to create three archetypes of role-playing games: melee, long rang, support. (Also, provided I have time, in writing or in sketches I hope to address how they may potential interact with their surroundings, weapons, other characters.) I intend to be familiar enough with Maya to begin studying biped character modeling.

Last 6 weeks: I will again be supplementing my Maya skills with tutorials on biped modeling and rigging. Emotion and behavioural styles will not be emphasized in the scope of this course.

End-of-term goals: To animate a basic walk cycle with simple motions of one of the characters designed for midterm. The character will be driven by basic keys to move in a simple 3D environment. Paper addressing research questions posed in proposal.

Long-term goals (after April): Details to movement such as bounce, emotion. To create more realistic walk-cycle for presentation. Have the character interact properly with envisioned 3D lymph node environment.

WENSI

Method:

Design and model/render the lymph node environment.

For the designing part of my project, these are the books that I will use:

1. Luke Ahearn “ 3D game environments: create professional 3D game worlds” 2008 (Main textbook)

2. Ernest Adams “Fundamentals of Game Design, 2nd Ed” 2009, Chapter 4: Game Words ( Elective reference)

3.David MaCrthy, Ste Curran, Simon Byron “The art of producing games” 2005. (Elective reference)

For modeling/rendering part of my project, I will learn to model the lymph node world in Maya Course MSc2016H, also I will use these following books:

1. Michael Ingrassia “Maya for Games: Modeling and Texturing Techniques with Maya and Mudbox” 2008 (Main textbook)

2. Luke Ahearn “ 3D Game Taxtures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop” 2009 (Elective reference)

3. Lightmapping in Maya: (Elective reference)

http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/lightmapping-in-maya

4. Building Scene: (Elective reference)

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Building%20Scenes.html

First 6 weeks: I will focus on studying how to design the game world from the textbook. Meanwhile, I will learn to model 3D game world through Maya Course MSc2016H

Mid-term goal: To create the basic sketch of the map of whole lymph node world. To complete several comprehensive sketches for various individual parts of the map.

Last 6 weeks: To further gain Maya modeling skill for creating the game world and to learn texture techniques. To start bringing objects from Maya to Unity, and to organize the game’s environment.

End of term goal: Base on the comprehensive sketches, I will finish modeling and start to apply texture on the parts of the game world that has been sketched in detail in the first 6 weeks. In addition, I will bring those objects from Maya and finish setting up a small part of the 3D environment that allows characters to move around.

Long term goal: To design other parts of the lymph node world, to create comprehensive sketches for those parts, and then to eventually build up the whole 3D lymph node game world.

Objectives (group)

Long-term goals:

To create a game that allows players to explore body tissues from a microscopic vantage point. The characters in this game may include lymphocytes, leukocytes, cancer cells, parasites, RBCs, or imagined ones (such as a nanomachine, or a shrunken human).

This game will have different challenges to overcome in different parts of the body, and may include: a racing or obstacle course through circulatory vessels, scavenger hunts (perhaps to collect the correct antigens, to then present to T and B cells and initiate immune responses), commanding an army of cells to: 1. eliminate pathogens in an acute inflammatory reaction, 2. clear up the resultant necrotic and cell debris, 3. regenerate and rebuild the area (this outcome may include permanent scar tissue, or complete regeneration, depending on how much damage was done), fight individual battles (against microorganisms, mutated cells, self-reacting immune cells i.e. in autoimmune diseases), finding and delivering toxins to the liver to be metabolized (this challenge could be time-senstive, so that if a player is too slow the body is poisoned), rectifying a peptic ulcer (this may involve: 1. fixing underlying causes: increasing mucous production, epithelial cell populations, clearing away h. pylori, decreasing HCl and pepsinogen secretions, and 2. repairing the areas), altering the metabolism occurring in the liver depending on blood glucose levels and nutrients available (i.e. perform gluconeogenesis when there isn't glycogen or glucose available), altering metabolic pathways in muscle cells depending on the oxygen demand or energy needs.

There are many possible plots, body areas, and challenges to elaborate on.

The target audience of this game will be high school students, and university students. Background or short tutorials will be given for every challenge, so that scientific concepts (that may be beyond those taught in high school) will not alienate the intended audience.

Short-term goals:

Create pre-production documents (storyboards, plot and character descriptions, game manual), an interactive application to present the game manual, and initial attempts at 3D rendered and rigged characters.

After April, these components will be unified and placed into a 3D lymph node environment; the character(s) should be able to navigate this environment, and the encyclopaedia should be accessible through game menus, or by clicking on objects in the 3D environment.