Patricia Gouveia

This paper uses a communication sciences methodological approach (arts-based research 1) in the way it combines speculative thinking, game design and game theory to the interpretation and future use of new gaming devices and software for Virtual Reality game and play experiences. Starting with the following research questions: Is it possible to combine game engines and virtual reality HMD's to enhance presence? Can these peripheral devices sometimes ruin the gaming experience? The aim of this article is to generate and disseminate knowledge in the game design field, in general, and in the use of new devices applied to game and play environments, in particular.

— This paper uses a communication sciences methodological approach (arts-based research 1) in the way it combines speculative thinking, game design and game theory to the interpretation and future use of new gaming devices and software for Virtual Reality game and play experiences. Starting with the following research questions: Is it possible to combine game engines and virtual reality HMD's to enhance presence? Can these peripheral devices sometimes ruin the gaming experience? The aim of this article is to generate and disseminate knowledge in the game design field, in general, and in the use of new devices applied to game and play environments, in particular. INDEX TERMS — Virtual reality, oculus rift, gaming experiences and play installations.

In 2000 I worked for three months in a speech recognition American company established in Lisbon. At that time we were testing an autonomous software for intelligent ticket selling, among other possibilities. The company went bankrupt after more or less six months. We were settled in a very fancy office with a terrace and a nice view. It was my first experience with start ups bubbles and their short, sometimes very short, term cycle. Life went smoothly after a few more ups and downs with web and gaming related new businesses. The market was stimulating and I decided to work as a freelancer in arts and design multimedia projects, from net to CD-Rom art and design. Interactive scripts and non linear narratives were just about to become a brand new field and I wanted to explore every single path of it. I wanted to write parallel paths with playful stories; and I wanted to create images with pixels and digital brushes instead of oil and canvas as I did fine arts as a student. I wanted to merge arts and design and to understand machine language. I learned some programming basics and worked with programmers. Among other things I challenged myself to team work with people who had different backgrounds and came from different areas. From architecture to cinema through history and philosophy, everything was open to reinterpretation and the digital reinvented my own sense of self. Step by step I scanned myself and I became part of the web.

O livro Pensar Videojogos: Design, Arte e Comunicação estimula o leitor a considerar os jogos como obras abertas
a múltiplas interpretações e experiências, numa viagem pela complexidade dos tabuleiros lúdicos, desfaz-se o novelo do fio de Ariadne com subtileza e simplicidade. Sabemos, logo de início, que temos que voltar ao ponto de partida por isso a trilogia “design, arte e comunicação” poderia estar lá ao
contrário, “comunicação, arte e design”. E assim outra vez até se resolver todo o puzzle das “potencialidades interactivas” num “constante apelo à participação active do jogador, através de leituras acções, (re)criações e interpretações do seu conteúdo”
(citação do autor a partir da introdução do livro).

In this article we state that serious gaming can be used to help solve real world problems in education and health care. Serious gaming, which aims to merge digital and real world social environments, can be also instrumental to enhance connectivity among communities. The main statements and ideas developed in this paper are inspired in concrete projects and actions in the field of serious games, game based learning, transmedia experience and alternate reality games. The purpose of this research is to review some literature and projects in serious gaming as future inspirations for the creation and production of a serious game design applied to education and/or health. The approach adapted in this paper is connected with methodologies used in communication sciences/design where it is presented a state of the art of the field before starting creating and developing a game prototype. The main motivation of this paper is to present a consistent body of projects to inspire future research in this area.

GOUVEIA, P., (2014). "Uma narrativa possível sobre os jogos criados em Portugal nos últimos anos. Reflexão a partir do livro “Videojogos em Portugal, História, Tecnologia e Arte” de Nelson Zagalo (2013)". Aniki : Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento, América do Norte, 1, mai. 2014. Disponível em: <http://aim.org.pt/ojs/index.php/revista/article/view/69/71>. Acesso em: 17 Out. 2014.

Neste artigo mapeia-se o território dos jogos digitais e das experiências lúdicas no sentido de se compreenderem algumas tendências artísticas da indústria de jogos digitais independente e sua relação com a indústria mainstream. No texto exploram-se alguns projectos transmedia, com ramificações na cultura analógica, para a partir deles
sugerir uma estética da participação que enaltece estratégias “old school” com raízes em movimentos artísticos visuais e performativos do século XX.

Drawing a distinction between perception, emotion, cognition and motor action in digital ecologies and in artificial creatures that abound in games and movies of the digital era prompts this article’s reflection on possibilities for the representation of action and emotion. Figurative, i.e., realistic, as well as more abstract representation strategies are considered in the context of clarifying an evident paradox in digital culture, namely the constant obsession with realistic representation in an age in which simulation enables exchange of the real reference – as
opposed to what happened, for example, in the case of photography and film – for another reference forged through digital technologies. An analysis of artificial life techniques is proposed in the context of better understanding how emotions are generated in artificial creatures.

This article explores digital games and play as transmedia experiences that mix technological and visual recombination trends. With a focus on Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and the convergence available in these projects between offline and online interactions, performances and happenings, it is argued that these playable spaces are an appropriate place to understand the dynamics of digital aesthetics since they involve their players in a complex and emerging experience. This text inquires old distinctions and dualities, especially the distinction between art and entertainment, higher art and popular art, art and design, among others.

In this article it is argued that the player’s experience in playable spaces and game environments is related to his/her autonomy into the emergent platform in terms of narrative and fiction.
Player’s are able to experience multiple situations and to collaborate for the progress of the platform itself. This article presents some transmedia experiences such as Uncle Roy All Around You (Blast Theory, 2003), Why So Serious? (Warner Bros.,
2007), Heartlands (’Ere Be Dragons, Active Ingredients, 2007) and Playing with Poetry (Gouveia et. al, 2010).

Neste artigo exploram-se possibilidades de “escrita” cooperativa em ambientes lúdicos, persistentes e cross media, gerados a partir da rede. Analisa-se a forma como o design de sistemas dinâmicos e a interacção humano-máquina pode ter em consideração e equilibrar mecanismos que fomentam tanto o altruísmo como a competição entre oponentes. Estratégias mistas que associam tendências próprias dos jogos-de-soma-nula, ou competição, versus jogos cooperativos do tipo dilema do prisioneiro. Considera-se importante estimular a participação activa na discussão e concepção de narrativas dependentes de diferentes processos de distribuição (internet,
telemóveis, imprensa, etc.) e apresentam-se projectos que ajudam a contextualizar as tribos digitais contemporâneas.

No artigo “Game design, seis sábios cegos e um elefante” argumenta-se que os jogos digitais são objectos complexos que pressupõem uma troca de ideias constante com áreas muito diversificadas da cultura digital contemporânea. Opta-se por uma interpretação aberta a partir de uma “imagem geral” do campo em estudo e admite-se que é a partir desta “imagem
geral” que cada especialidade é criada. Considera-se que os jogos digitais são os filhos pródigos da simulação numérica e aqueles que melhor exprimem um conjunto de experiências narrativas inerentes a toda a cultura digital. As ficções interactivas lúdicas trabalham para esclarecer o envolvimento que temos com outros media como a televisão, o cinema e a música. Estes artefactos exploram relações e sentidos de interacção, desenvolvem novos contextos de comunicação e geram, por via da simulação, um potencial transformativo que se centra numa combinação significante de diferentes factores: culturais, industriais, tecnológicos e sociais. A experiência da acção inerente à jogabilidade (gameplay) apela ao desenvolvimento de ficções processuais diversificadas em espaços e modos temporais múltiplos e polissémicos.

"This article explores the narrative paradox and how we can design interactive fictions where actions and narrations can contribute for a more meaningful experience within an interactive setting. In this paper we argue that pervasive and alternate reality games (ARGs) and blogs, where participants can cooperate and compete in the real application of tactics and strategies as they play the game online and offline, can contribute to create a more engaging environment where players are able to build their own stories.
Player made content and hyperfiction are useful tools to better
understand alternate reality games and blogs. The analysis of
playable fiction can contribute to recombine action and narration
in digital ecologies and we may consider that implosive stories, in
which everything happens simultaneously, present in digital
spaces allow us to better understand the problem of interactive
environments that use mixed technologies. We consider that
ARGs are inclusive spaces where gamers can learn how to deal
with different media, different communities and different genders.
In this mix media spaces gamers can play with action and
narrative in order to design their own fictions and stories in real
time. In this article we consider some ARGs, I’m Trying to
Believe, I Love Bees, Uncle Roy All Around You, among others, in
order to argue that this persistent games can be useful to better
understand the narrative paradox."

This article explores the possibilities of “written” cooperation in playable, persistent and cross media environments generated from the web. It analyses the form in which dynamic systems are designed and human-machine interaction may be taken into
consideration, balancing mechanisms that encourage both altruism and competition among opponents in digital spaces. Mixed strategies that associate individual trends of
zero-sum games, or competition, versus cooperative prisoner’s dilemma type games. It is deemed important to stimulate active participation in the discussion and conception of narratives dependent upon different distribution processes (web, mobile phones, print, etc.) and to present projects that help to contextualize contemporary digital tribes.

"Este artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre questões de
identidade e género chamando a atenção para algumas
estratégias que o design das interacções entre humanos
e máquinas pode ter em consideração na construção de
plataformas on-line para múltiplos participantes.
Sugere-se a utilização de métodos inclusivos que
misturem várias tipologias de jogo (acção, role
playing, estratégia, etc.) e que envolvam diferentes
comunidades de jogadores: media geeks ou otakus,
newbies e hardcore gamers, groupies, techno gurus,
hackers, androgynous, emo (emotional hardcore),
adeptos new wave, ecologistas, místicos, meditativos,
activistas, militantes de novas formas de sociabilidade,
fãs de manga, professores, estudantes, entre outros
possíveis."

In this article we argue that digital simulations promote and
explore complex relations between the player and the machine’s
cybernetic system with which it relates through gameplay, that is,
the real application of tactics and strategies used by participants as
they play the game. We plan to show that the realism of
simulation, together with the merger of artificial objects with the
real world, can generate interactive empathy between players and
their avatars. In this text, we intend to explore augmented reality
as a means to visualise interactive communication projects. With
ARToolkit, Virtools and 3ds Max applications, we aim to show
how to create a portable interactive platform that resorts to the
environment and markers for constructing the game’s scenario.
Many of the conventional functions of the human eye are being
replaced by techniques where images do not position themselves
in the traditional manner that we observe them (Crary, 1998), or
in the way we perceive the real world. The digitalization of the
real world to a new informational layer over objects, people or
environments, needs to be processed and mediated by tools that
amplify the natural human senses.

This chapter uses an arts and design based research methodology to
explore emergent possibilities in contemporary transmedia arts and design practices. Focusing in narrative and fiction creation for the development of participatory and performative events with emphasis in audience or community engagement. Conveying inspiration from modernist and postmodernist movements it reveals the role of
participation design in connected and smart experiences for urban cooperative gaming and play. Mobile gaming and play technologies taking advantage of sensors and data tracking devices immerse us in a persistent and pervasive game of life (Conway, 1970) which blur the boundaries between the real and the fictional world.