PROJECT DETAILS
Project Title
Interactive Game Scenario Authoring and Evaluation Methodology
Project Summary
While digital game technology has been widely adopted for different application domains such as healthcare,
training and education, creating and making changes to bespoke games remain a big challenge. Game
development using traditional design methods can add significant burden and costs to the research development
process.
This project will investigate novel game scenario authoring methodologies, and explore a range of approaches and
evaluation strategies for interactive editing and authoring of game scenarios, in the context of character dialogues
and game narratives. Specifically dialogue generations that give rise to game interactions will be investigated. Using
the abstraction of scenario based training, dialogue authoring will create experiences where specific dramatic
interactions between game characters and players will occur. This project will investigate the authoring and design
considerations for game based training and aim to develop a node-based visual editing tool for scenario
modification and variations with author-centric approaches. At each stage, HCI techniques may be required to
evaluate the efficacy of the approaches developed.
Academic Impact
This project will make a substantial research contribution to the field of serious game, HCI, and Artificial Intelligence
through both its exploration of game authoring tools and interfaces. This connects to a number of established and
prestigious research communities including the conferences ACM CHI, but also ACM journals such as TOIS,
TOCHI, Computers and Graphics (C&G) or The Visual Computer (TVC).
Game interactions that result from either explicitly authored paths or computational models will address the
challenging issue of sustainable serious game development in multidisciplinary research communities and digital
games industry. The results of this research investigation will help inform the adoption of novel scenario authoring in
a range of digital game-based applications.
Societal Impact
Serious game scenario authoring is becoming a more substantial part of digital game research, and solutions to this
challenge will be applicable to a range of domains including education and health. As the scale and complexity of
digital game application increasing, the cost of research game development is exponential to the number of
scenarios and game content required to make the play experience more varied.
Through better and effective methodologies for serious game creation, the research investigation will help to
improve the processes in this important area, mitigate difficulties and costs in the research and implementation of
serious games.
Training Opportunities
The successful candidate would be nurtured into an international profiled researcher over the course of the MRes
studentship. The student would have the opportunity to grow into an academic role through exposure to research,
conferences, and networking events and offered structured research methodological practices from the supervisory
team. There will be additional training opportunities in the form of short placements at one or more of several worldleading research centres. This will offer significant impact in the development within the role of the project candidate
SUPERVISORY TEAM
First Supervisor
Professor Wen Tang
Additional Supervisors
Dr Fred Charles, Dr Charlie Hargood
Recent publications by
supervisors relevant to this
project
Gao, Q. H, Tang, W, Wan, T R, Zhang, K, B., 2017. An Improved Augmented
th
Reality Registration Method Based on Visual SLAM. Accepted by the 11
International Conference on E-learning and Games.
Huang, D.J. Tang, P., Gong, R., Tang, W, and Ding, Y., Development of 3D
Interactive Virtual Angiography for Medical Training, Conditionally accepted to
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (04/2017)
Hargood, Charlie, Hunt, Verity, Weal, Mark and Millard, David (2016) Patterns of
sculptural hypertext in location based narratives. In, 27th ACM Conference on
Hypertext and Social Media, Halifax, CA, 10 - 13 Jul 2016.(won best paper)
Marc Cavazza, Fred Charles. 2016. User Interaction for Interactive Storytelling.
Chapter in Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies,
(Editors - Ryohei Nakatsu, Matthias Rauterberg and Paolo Ciancarini), Springer
Singapore, pages 1–14.
INFORMAL ENQUIRIES
To discuss this opportunity further, please contact Professor Wen Tang, Head of Research, Creative Technology
Department, BU. [email protected]
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
The MRes Fee Waive Scholarships are open to UK & EU candidates, who must demonstrate outstanding qualities
and be motivated to complete an MRes in 12 months full-time.
The successful applicants must have a proven previous academic excellence (first class honours or equivalent).
An IELTS (Academic) score of 6.5 minimum (or equivalent) is essential for candidates for whom English is not their
first language.
In addition to satisfying the basic entry criteria, BU will look closely at the qualities, skills and background of each
candidate and what they can bring to their chosen research project in order to ensure successful completion.
Additional Eligibility Criteria:
BSc in Computer Graphics, Visualisation, Games or Computer Science.
HOW TO APPLY
Please complete the online application form by 24 July 2017