Thank you for opening this movie, I am Takahero Miura from AIST, Japan.
I would like to talk about the GAME, Game As a Measurement Environment.
This is about the scheme to evaluate interfaces and game contents based on test theories, particularly item response theory.
Computer games have become increasingly widespread and diversifiable, with the improvements in hardware and software performances.
However, visually impa ired people frequently find it difficult to enjoy most of these recent games.
There has also been progress in audio games intended for visually impaired gamers. These games present game information as voices and sound effects.
However, it is difficult for sighted people who mainly use visual information.
To fill the gap between the two, there are an increasing number of inclusive games that gamers can play regardless of their disability conditions.
However, to realize the inclusive game for everyone, designing and evaluating such games are complicated. We should consider interfaces, game contents as well as player characteristics.
So, it is necessary to establish a scheme to efficiently evaluate them in a short time.
So, our goal is to construct the GAME, game as a measurement environment, for efficient evaluation of inclusive multiple game elements while considering players characteristics.
The GAME concept is to embed experimental design in a game. First, we prepare course templates.
Then, we place substages randomly to reduce order effects.
And then, evaluation stage was generated.
After that, we collect play logs of the stage by various players.
Then, we analyze the play logs per substages based on dichotomous Item Response Theory, namely IRT.
So, we can get the item characteristic curve, ICC, of the substage templates.
Using the ICC and playlogs, we estimate each person’s ability of gameplay based on posterior distribution.
When we want to generate the stage and simulate the gameplays, linear programming using ICC and each person’s ability of gameplay can generate the various length of the optimal evaluation stages.
Evaluation. We evaluated our scheme on inclusive side scroll action game named planet saga.
Our participants played with visual, audio, and touch senses in the first half and then without visual sense in the second half.
In the second half, they could select audio play, or audio & touch plays with the tactile game controller or the dot view.
In total, 225 players participated.
Results. Based on the ICCs of elapsed time in the substages, we could estimate quality of gameplays per playstyles or disability conditions.
As shown in the upper right figure, players who employed audio play could generally clear the substages speedily.
There was a significant difference in the quality of game play between audio play and touch play with a dot-matrix display, and no significant differences were observed between audio play and touch play with tactile game controller.
On the disability conditions, there were no significant differences among the participants’ disability conditions.
So, Based on the IRT scheme, it is possible to briefly analyze the conditions for plays and to consider a large number of people.
Then, based on the linear programming using ICCs, we could get substage combination to efficiently evaluate playing ability. Then, the distributions of quality of the game plays were obtained.
Based on the distributions of quality of the game plays, we could evaluate probability to satisfy homoscedasticity.
In our case, the stage generated by 12 substages satisfied homoscedasticity in 50% or more, and that by 15 substages in 90%.
Thus, the simulation by the linear programming can induce the efficient numbers of substages to employ for evaluation.
This slide shows conclusion and future work. Thank you for your kind attention.