Honours Projects
The Effect of Avatars on Player Immersion in First Person Shooters
First Person Shooters (FPS) are an established and popular computer game format. Central to FPS games is that the player views and interacts with the gameworld through an avatar. The avatar in FPS games is the primary (in some cases the only) means by which the player may interact with the game (world). A variety of approaches are used in FPS games in presenting the avatar to the player. These include giving (or not giving) the avatar a face, name and/or voice, whether the avatar's previous gameworld history is made known to the player and whether the avatar is permanently under the player's control, or sometimes presented in situations outside of the player's control, such as cut-scenes.
The major aim of this project is to examine, via empirical research, the effectiveness of various methods of avatar presentation in First Person Shooters. A secondary aim will be to create a taxonomy of avatar presentation, as a basis for the analysis. Experimental subjects will be invited to play a selection of FPS games. The subjects will be interviewed and asked to fill out a number of surveys (before and after play) examining the player's personality enjoyment and immersion. The primacy of the avatar in the player's relation with the FPS gameworld makes the avatar central to the player's immersion in these games. Given the different choices that can be made in avatar presentation it is arguable that the choice made for a particular game will affect (either assisting or hindering) the level of immersion of the player in the gameworld. This project should reveal if the different possible choices in avatar presentation do affect player immersion. It should also give some indication as to which choices are more effective. A student undertaking this project should have some familiarity with computer games, particularly first person shooters. Some knowledge of statistics (such as having completed STAT170 or STAT171) would be useful.
The Role of the Games master in Roleplaying
There is a significant amount of current research interest in creating automated story telling engines. While improved and more flexible story telling software would be applicable in computer games, training simulations and educational software, the efforts to date suffer from significantly restricted theoretical and practical understanding of the required functionality of such software. Storytelling engines are, in many ways, an attempt to computerise the functions of a roleplaying games master and be viewed as a software engineering task. Any such task requires a proper understanding of the systems and functions that are being rendered in software. The aim of this project is to develop abetter understanding of the processes of games mastering and to use that understanding to propose an improved software architecture for automated story telling engines. The project will involve observation, surveying and interviewing of practicing games masters and analysis of those results to determine the central functions of a games master. A student undertaking this project should have some familiarity with computer games. A knowledge of roleplaying games, either on computer or not (but preferably both) is also important. Some knowledge of statistics (such as having completed STAT170 or STAT171) would be useful.