Games

Many aspects of game jams have been studied as their popularity continues to grow. Their lingering effects on learning, motivation, and social interaction has been documented over the years. In this paper, we observe the immediate effects game jams have on participant confidence in game making skills, and preparedness, as they change over the course of the jam. We conduct surveys on three different jams held from 2016 to 2019. We collect a total of 107 surveys with 26 full sets (subjects) for the confidence questions and 17 for the preparedness.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a Summer Game Development Camp to improve perceptions and persistence of under-represented minorities in computer science (CS). The focus of the camp was to measure changes in the perceptions of and persistence with CS in girls aged between 9 and 11 years old. The game development camp consisted of four days of practical lessons on programming and game development. The camp concluded with a game jam on the final day.

We propose a game development framework capable of governing the behavior of complementary companions in a video game. A “complementary” action is contrasted with a mimicking action and is defined as any action by a friendly non-player character that furthers the player’s strategy. This is determined through a combination of both player-action and game-state prediction processes while allowing the AI companion to experiment. We determine the location of interest for companion actions based on a dynamic set of regions customized to the individual player.

We present this event report and discussion on the SLO Hacks “local hack day”, a 12 hour free-format hackathon held on December 2, 2017 at the Campus of California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). A first of its kind for our community, the event presents unique challenges and opportunities. SLO Hacks, an entirely student run volunteer organization, has mobilized to overcome institutional, logistical and educational challenges in order to enable hackathon events at Cal Poly.