Forschung

Projects

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  Professorship Interactive Narrative Design

  The professorship Interactive Narrative Design researches tools to communicate, discuss and comprehend complexity, as a meaning-making practice for the 21st century.

  Introduction

  Digital technology provides a platform for interactive and dynamic forms of narrative in games, virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive documentary, and additional future formats. There is an increasing demand in business, consumer market and the public sector for engaging interactive narrative products and services. However, the creative industry is still in its infancy when it comes to design approaches and applications of interactive digital narratives. The professorship will change this by building expertise in best practices, design paradigms and pedagogy.

  The research will create impact on several levels.

  Impact on the creative industry

  Identification and experimental verification of design conventions and larger patterns. The aim is to gather and generate knowledge about interactive narrative design that industry and the cultural sector can apply in many areas, such as (serious) games, television, journalism, museums, education or public awareness campaigns. The professorship will disseminate this knowledge by means of publications, industry events and collaborations.

  Impact on education

  The professorship will develop a specific pedagogy to train IDN practitioners. How can we develop formal training? What is the skill-set and mindset necessary? What is different from creative writing/scriptwriting/rule-based game design? What could a curriculum look like? The professorship aims to develop a degree programme in interactive narrative design.

  Impact on arts & profession

  Digital technology is transforming narrative in a way that is similar to how printing technology has previously enabled diverse formats, such as the novel, the newspaper article, and the pamphlet. This means that IDN cuts across screen-based formats, installations, augmented reality, VR/360, wearables, and upcoming future forms. The goal here is to extend the awareness of IDN as a cross-cutting perspective by building a diverse community of practice.

  Impact on society

  The professorship understands Interactive Digital Narrative as a tool to communicate, discuss and comprehend complexity, as a meaning-making practice for the 21st century. This tool can be used for example in a cultural training program for refugees, or in exploring complex political issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. IDN also has applications in more personal situations involving multiple perspectives and competing narratives, such as couples’ therapy or team communication. In this regard, the professorship aims to raise awareness of the power of interactive digital narrative through public-facing projects.

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  Integrating Research in Interactive Storytelling (IRIS)

  Measuring the User Experience of Interactive Storytelling applications

  The IRIS project aims at creating a virtual centre of excellence that will be able to achieve breakthroughs in the understanding of Interactive Storytelling and the development of corresponding technologies.

  Interactive Storytelling is a major endeavour to develop new media which could offer a radically new user experience, with a potential to revolutionise digital entertainment.
  European research in Interactive Storytelling has played a leading role in the development of the field, and this creates a unique opportunity to strengthen its position even further by structuring some of its best actors within a Network of Excellence.

  The project is organised around four major objectives:

  • To extend Interactive Storytelling technologies in terms of performance and scalability, so that they can support the production of actual Interactive Narratives
  • To make the next generation of Interactive Storytelling technologies more accessible to authors and content creators of different media backgrounds (scriptwriters, storyboarders, game designers)
  • To develop a more Integrated Approach to Interactive Storytelling Technologies, achieving a proper
    integration with cinematography
  • To develop Methodologies to evaluate Interactive Storytelling systems as well as the media experience of Interactive Narrative
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  Fun of Gaming (FuGa)

  Measuring the Human Experience of Media Enjoyment

  Digital (computer and video) game playing is the fastest-growing form of entertainment media,* and enormous resources are invested in the creation of new digital games. In addition to entertainment, digital games are more and more used for therapeutic, educational, and work-related purposes. Established methods to measure gaming experience with high temporal resolution are lacking, however.

  The main objective of the FUGA project was to create novel methods and improve existing measures in order to examine how the different aspects of gaming experience (e.g., different emotions and cognitions) can be assessed comprehensively with high temporal resolution.

  FuGA Homepage

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  researching games BarCamp

  Annual BarCamp on the research of digital games

  researching games BarCamp (short: #resgames) is a BarCamp dedicated to the study of digital games. It assembles scholars and practitioners from all academic disciplines – be it computer sciences, media studies, education, engineering, psychology, literary studies, psychology, business administration, medicine, physics, sociology, maths, law, or religious studies.

  While there is no shortage of game-related business events, conferences, and festivals nowadays, #resgames considers itself as a counterpoint to rigid academic formats or exclusively practice-oriented events. This is part of the BarCamp formula: everyone is allowed (and required) to present their research, the schedule is decided upon by all participants on site. Following the BarCamp tradition, sponsors bear the bulk of the expenses, so participants’ fees – which include board and lodge – stay very reasonable.

  Apart from its academic and interdisciplinary focus #resgames is therefore above all meant to be an open and community-driven platform for young games researchers and professionals.

  researching games homepage