How Can Accessibility for Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Players be Improved in Video Games?

This research investigates how the accessibility of video games can be improved for deaf and hearing-impaired players. The journal is divided into several areas, first, examining the use of subtitles and closed captions used in video games; and second, how visual cues can be used to provide better accessibility for deaf and hearing-impaired gamers. This includes effectively creating suitable atmospheres and mood in games through lighting as well as having a varied environment that prevents the players from getting bored with the setting of a game and finally exploring current best practices within the gaming industry. Through this research data the issues with accessibility can be found as well as how a lack of accessibility affects deaf and hearing-impaired gamers. Research from this investigation supports some of the evidence from other researchers in the field that accessibility features for deaf and hearing-impaired can be considered and implemented.

Review of the Book “Historical Memory in Social Media” by Sophia Tikhonova, Denis Artamonov

The subject of review is the book “Historical Memory in Social Media” by Sofya Tikhonova and Denis Artamonov. In the book, the authors focus on the design and specification of the production of images of the past on the Internet and the gaming industry, referring to various materials, from text “fake” messages and memes to computer games. Research is not limited to the description of empirical data. The supporting structure of the research is the author's concept of digital history and digital philosophy of history. Research optics is aimed at determining the status of the digital subject of history, which seems to be an acute anthropological and socio-philosophical problem. The book discusses the issues of modification of the politics of memory, the production of “fakes”, the connotation of historical events, the trend of miniaturization of history and the crisis of great narratives. Considerable attention is paid to the everyday everyday practices of information production, woven into the context of “history making”. The review pays attention to all the main structural parts of the book and reproduces the logical sequence of the key ideas of the text. With references to the original author's text, the reviewer also gives his own interpretations of the conceptual and terminological innovations of the book, and also focuses on some controversial aspects of the research.

Performance Analysis of Indie Gaming Projects on Crowdfunding Platforms: Evidence from Kickstarter.com

Research question: The aim of this paper is to examine the financial success of projects in game development industry in comparison with to projects in other industries hosted on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.com. Motivation: We live in the world of technology where companies arise and disappear on daily basis. The traditional way of financing was expanded with alternative online platforms. Our goal was to conduct an empirical analysis of one crowdfunding platform (Kickstarter.com) in order to understand if technology projects are doing better than other projects. If they do, what are the key factors for their success? Idea: Our goal was to better understand how crowdfunding model supports small indie development projects and projects in other industries. Data: We used the data of 148.510 companies applied for crowdfunding financing between 2015 and 2020, published on the web crawler platform Web Robots. Tools: All statistical analyses were performed using statistical software IBM® SPSS® Statistics v.21. The data were presented using standard methods of non-parametric descriptive statistics (absolute and relative frequencies for medians and interquartile ranges for numeric outcomes). For testing of statistical significance of difference between two groups we used the Pearson´s Chi-Quadrat test and Mann-Whitney test, where appropriate. The effect size for the 2x2 analyses was estimated using Odds ratios. Findings: The paper analyses the financial success of gaming and not gaming projects and tries to identify key factors for successful funding. We found a statistically significant higher prevalence of successful financing in game development projects, with 2.3 times higher odds of successful funding compared to not-gaming industry. Our analysis of quantitative indicators such as the number of backers, goal amount, pledged amount, pledged amount per backer and pledged to goal ratio also showed that projects in game development statistically outperformed projects in other categories. Promising game projects were supported by three times more backers on average and attained almost as double funds as other projects, while still sporting more modest pledged amounts per backer. These findings support the notion of crowdfunding being a viable modality of financing independent game development in emerging economies. Contribution: This paper expands the existing research related to the crowdfunding platforms and indie development companies and formulates key factors for successful financing for technology startup firms.

Deceptive advertising and its connection to unregulated gambling in the gaming industry

Streaming and on-demand entertainment content on new media platforms exposes viewers to gambling as influencers leverage audience’s trust within an insufficiently regulated industry. This article covers instances of influencers directing undisclosed endorsements for gamer gambling services to their audience, highlighting the presence of both inherent risk and of the need to regulate. On regulation, this article provides an evaluation of the regulatory framework already in place and whether consumers are sufficiently protected against deceptive advertising. It establishes a connection between undisclosed endorsements and unregulated gambling, in some cases involving minors. Lastly, it provides a thorough analysis on the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework as enforced by the FTC in the US and European influencer marketing legislation. This includes a discussion on the limitations of competent authorities to regulate in time juxtaposed by the strong interests of stakeholders within the gaming industry.

Consumer engagement in value co-creation within virtual video game communities

With the emergence of the gaming industry as the most empowering form of entertainment, video game online communities have become a refuge for many users who are looking to fulfil specific needs, leading them to participate in creating their own experiences. Drawing upon the uses and gratifications theory, this research aims to understand the motivations behind consumer engagement in value co-creation within digital game distribution services (exp. Steam), and how it affects loyalty. To the extent of the author’s knowledge, little research has addressed this question within the gaming industry. We conducted an online survey administered to video game platforms users, through which 195 valid answers were collected. Findings suggest that hedonic along with personal and social motivations have positive influence on user’s engagement to co-create value, which in return increases their loyalty behavior.

Overcoming Challenges of Applying Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Vehicle Control

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a booming area in artificial intelligence. The applications of RL are endless nowadays, ranging from fields such as medicine or finance to manufacturing or the gaming industry. Although multiple works argue that RL can be key to a great part of intelligent vehicle control related problems, there are many practical problems that need to be addressed, such as safety related problems that can result from non-optimal training in RL. For instance, for an RL agent to be effective it should first cover all the situations during training that it may face later. This is often difficult when applied to the real-world. In this work we investigate the impact of RL applied to the context of intelligent vehicle control. We analyse the implications of RL in path planning tasks and we discuss two possible approaches to overcome the gap between the theorical developments of RL and its practical applications. Specifically, firstly this paper discusses the role of Curriculum Learning (CL) to structure the learning process of intelligent vehicle control in a gradual way. The results show how CL can play an important role in training agents in such context. Secondly, we discuss a method of transferring RL policies from simulation to reality in order to make the agent experience situations in simulation, so it knows how to react to them in reality. For that, we use Arduino Yún controlled robots as our platforms. The results enhance the effectiveness of the presented approach and show how RL policies can be transferred from simulation to reality even when the platforms are resource limited.

Estimating Customer Lifetime Value in the Gaming Industry Using Incomplete Data

We were asked by Innovation Embassy to work with a large dataset centred around gambling investment, with the task of making a predictive function for computing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and also to see if there are ways of detecting fraudulent financial practices and addictive gambling patterns. We had moderate success with the data as it stands, but we were partly held back for two main reasons: the ability to discern a solid definition of CLV due to highly inconsistent data and data that contained many large and incomputable gaps. Different machine learning algorithms were used to find CLV functions based on key variables. We also describe a short and explicit list of ways where the base data can be improved to support effective calculation of CLV. Our key findings suggest that the average customer's CLV is 1035 and ~80% of revenue is brought in from ~10% of the clients.

DEVELOPING AR INTERFACE FOR INTERIOR MODELLING FROM 3D SENSOR

This paper aims to show the process of Augmented Reality (AR) development representing existing building interior from a 3D sensor. These days, AR is becoming well known and widely used in various type of areas such as in gaming industry, medical training, and education. Due to its advantages, AR development for building interior is also necessity, specifically to assist people in understanding the scene more, in Architectural, Engineering, Construction / Facility Management (AEC/FM) applications as well as businesses like interior designing and household marketing. With respect to current situation of COVID-19 pandemic that has restricted travelling makes the usage of AR very beneficial and it could assist people to visualize the interior that needs to be visited. With the aid of suitable sensors like 3D sensor, the development of AR representing existing building interior which is usually full of clutter and occlusion could be eased.