Limbaj Natural în Jocuri Serioase

UNIVERSITATEA POLITEHNICA BUCUREȘTI

FACULTATEA DE AUTOMATICĂ ȘI CALCULATOARE

DEPARTAMENTUL CALCULATOARE

RAPORT DE CERCETARE

Limbaj natural în jocuri serioase

BUCUREȘTI

Iunie 2016

POLITECHNICA UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST

FACULTY OF AUTOMATIC CONTROL AND COMPUTERS

COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

RESEARCH PAPER

Natural Language in Serious Games

BUCHAREST

June 2016

Table of Contents

Figure 1 The ESP Game (von Ahn) 1

Figure 2 Peekaboom (von Ahn) 2

Figure 3 iSTART Game demonstration module (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015) 3

Figure 4 iSTART-ME selection menu (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015) 4

Figure 5 iSTART-ME level view (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015) 4

Figure 6 Map Conquest interface (Snow, Likens, Allen, & McNamara, 2015) 5

Figure 7 Screen shot of Balloon Bust mini-game (Snow, Allen, Jacovina, & McNamara) 5

Figure 8 Lifeline Game (Lifeline – New Game for Apple Watch, iPhone & iPad!) 6

Figure 9 Cisco Mind Share Game (Marcus & Schalk, 2010) 7

Figure 10 Cisco Mind Share (Marcus & Schalk, 2010) 7

Figure 11 Cisco Mind Share Switching (Marcus & Schalk, 2010) 8

Figure 12 Fund Identification Challenge (Moncada & Moncada, 2014) 8

Figure 13 Computer Fraud Challenge (Moncada & Moncada, 2014) 9

Figure 14 AIS Tansaction Cycles Game (Moncada & Moncada, 2014) 9

Figure 15 Auction Game: Sketch of game rounds (Jercic, Astor, Adam, & Hilborn, 2012) 10

Figure 16 Scene from Auction Game (Jercic, Astor, Adam, & Hilborn, 2012) 10

1. Introduction

Nowadays, people from many parts of the world have an increased interest in playing computer games. This habit is more likely to be even more popular in the future, as a result of technology development, due to the abundance of desktop and mobile devices from the market. Although gaming attracts especially young generations, there are also many enthusiasts from other age categories that use games for entertainment. However, a new trend in the market is using games not only as fun activities, but also for an educational purpose. The new concept is learning while having fun, investing both time and energy for a higher purpose.

Games “with a purpose”, also called “serious games”, are using brain power to solve problems that computers are not yet capable to solve. The human skills can also be added together in order to find a solution, as people are able to collaborate over the Internet for solving the game. The interesting part consists in the fact that people can also interact with the system, change the environment and earn points that will help unlocking parts of the game that were not accessible from the start. This increases motivation and maintains interest of the player to keep learning while playing serious games.

Serious games are used in various domains, such as security, academics, Internet search, computer vision, but also corporate environment. In the next section, a series of existing games will be described, along with the advantages of playing them. The context for which the games were developed will also be presented, in order to have a better understanding of the domain. Some representative examples of serious games are the ESP Game and Peekaboom, the Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) iSTART-ME, ReaderBench, Lifeline, CollectionLab, Cisco’s Mind Share.

1.1 State of the art

The ESP Game is a “game with a purpose” (von Ahn) that focuses on labeling random images and can be played online in teams of two players. Each player is able to see a picture and he must try to guess what the other player will say that the image represents. They can not see what the other players is typing and the game will end when both players will agree on a common word that best describes the image. The scenario can be observed in Figure 1, representing the image of a bag, and the common word agreed for describing it is “purse”.

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Figure 1 The ESP Game (von Ahn)

The game aims to acquire manual labeling, the only method for obtaining precise image descriptions in the online environment. Even if the process of manual labeling is not very cost effective, but rather takes time and attention to details, the ESP Game makes this “work” entertaining and popular, as studies shown that the game is played more than 40 hours on week. Also, from 25 October 2013 until now, more than 10 million image labels were collected by the system. (von Ahn)

Another interesting serious game is Peekaboom, which improves the data collected by the ESP Game by providin information also about the precise location of an object from an image. “More specifically, it identifies which pixels belong to which object in the image”. (von Ahn) As in the ESP Game, Peekaboom can also be played by two random players that work in team. However, in this case, two roles are identified: “Peek” and “Boom”. The Peek player starts with an empty screen, while Boom can visualize both an image and a related word – provided directly by the ESP Game, as can be seen in Figure 2.

Peek has to guess the word associated with the image that Boom has, while Boom helps him by revealing step by step parts of the picture and by providing additional hints. The team has 4 minutes to complete the tasks and in this time they can pass through as many combinations as possible, in order to win points. They can skip difficult images and after the first rund, they switch roles and go back from the beginning of the image discovering. In order to earn as many points as possible, the Boom player could show only some strategical parts of the image, that are most intuitive for the other player to guess the correct label.

Figure 2 Peekaboom (von Ahn)

The development of serious games went further and as a result, the Intelligent Tutoring

System (ITS) iSTART-ME was released. Intelligent Tutoring Systems are „computer-based learning environments that adapt content and feedback to students based on their individual needs” (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015). Their aim is to improve student performance and to promote learning by increasing the student`s interest and commitment to the training and practice.

Gamification is a solution found by researchers to be suitable in order to increase student`s attention for the tasks they have to perform, by adding gaming-based features and the possibility to personalize in a certaing degree the environment. However, studies also shown that a high liberty degree of personalization and unuseful content that does not add quality to the learning process have a negative impact on the learning process, this elements being also called “seductive distracters”. (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015)

iSTART is an acronym that stants for Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking and provides an environment “designed to improve students’ comprehension of science texts through the instruction of reading strategies”. (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015) Reading strategies, comprehension monitoring, predicting and paraphrasing are some of the system`s features. As a result of using the game, students improve their comprehension level when reading complex scientific texts.

The system includes introduction, demonstration and practice module, and have animated “agents” that explain the reading strategies and coordinates students in their activities. The animated agents also demonstrate some of the strategies explained and student have to identify the correct ones that were shown. In the last part, students have to practice the strategies previous learned, by applying them on scientific texts. Students will then receive feedback based on their results from the game – a score from 0 to 3.

Figure 3 iSTART Game demonstration module (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015)

iSTART-ME is a continuation of iStart game, having additional game-based features – properties that improve student`s motivation, engagement, and persistence in order to perform the learning tasks. A selection menu was added (see Figure 4), from which student can personalize the environment they use. Earning points and seeing rewards, trophies and level are now possible (see Figure 5), along with playing mini-games and unlocking certain game-based features on each level from 0 to 25 are now possible for the players.

The iSTART-ME offers great flexibility and interaction with texts from multiple topics. The interface is overall more friendly and fun, but also adds value to the learning process by assuring valuable text examples on different degrees of complexity. The points earned are transformed on iBucks, the currency used to unlock game-based features –such as changing background color and teacher agents, but also to play mini-games, like Balloon Bust. Even if the cost of the additional features or mini-games wanted is deductive from the amount of total iBucks available, the number of points is not decreasing, as the points are not deductive.

Figure 4 iSTART-ME selection menu (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015)

Figure 5 iSTART-ME level view (Snow, Allen, Jackson, & McNamara, 2015)

Map Conquest is on of the interfaces options that can be chosen from the extended practice interface of the game, along with Coached Practice and Showdown. While Coached Practice is a „non-game based method of practice adapted from the original iSTART system” (Snow, Likens, Allen, & McNamara, 2015), with teaching agents that provide feedback based on student`s results, the other two interfaces are game-based. Showdown is an option where players compete against computers in order to earn points, while in Map Conquest players earn dice in order to conquer squares on a map.(see Figure 6)

Figure 6 Map Conquest interface (Snow, Likens, Allen, & McNamara, 2015)

Figure 7 Screen shot of Balloon Bust mini-game (Snow, Allen, Jacovina, & McNamara)

Generative practice games, Identification mini-games, Personalizable features and Achievement screens are the four main functionalities of the iSTART-ME system, providing reach content and look of the game. At the same time, valuable information can be extracted by analyzing the logs in order to investigate „patterns in students’ choices across and within each type of interaction”. (Snow, Likens, Allen, & McNamara, 2015)

Figure 8 Lifeline Game (Lifeline – New Game for Apple Watch, iPhone & iPad!)

Lifeline is an interactive fiction game for mobile devices, where players have to make decisions to help Taylor, the protagonist, after crash landing on the moon of an alien planet. The game can be played from iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, and is based on the life or deaths decisions that the users and Taylor both take and face the consequences. The story is relaying on the player and has many possible outcomes, being an “immersive story of survival and perseverance” (Clover, 2016 ). What is actual interesting about Lifeline is that the game can be played in real world time, as players receive notifications from it asking where the story should go.

The games begins with “Hello, can anyone read me?” and then the user is drawn in a sci-fi story in order to help Taylor to stay alive after the accident. The story can have many endings, based on how long the player succeeds to keep the protagonist alive. Dying With A Broken Leg, Freezing On The Trip Through The Canyon, Taken Over By Aliens, Sacrifice Taylor, Escaping And Nuking The Moon are some of the possible endings of Lifeline, the first one being also the shortest one. (Arthur)

Cisco Mind Share is another serious game whose aim is to help students and employees learn for the CCENT and CCNA certifications in an entertaining and fun way. (see Figure 9) “In the game, players learn, practise and validate core networking skills in each module.” (Donovan, 2012) The demo version includes 5 topics: Devices and Cables, The OSI Model, Binary numbers, MAC Addressing and Switch Basics, and other topics are added in the non-free version. The game focuses on developing networking skills and practice in an stimulating environment through many challenges like buiding networks and setting up addresses for them, address translation and applying the OSI model.

The game has 3 levels: Easy, Medium and Difficult from which the player can choose, based on his current knowledge and can choose a round he wants to play, earning points for each task completed at the end. He is able to moditor in detail his activity from the game, a complex interface being provided by the system for te user`s profile.

Figure 9 Cisco Mind Share Game (Marcus & Schalk, 2010)

Figure 10 Cisco Mind Share (Marcus & Schalk, 2010)

Figure 11 Cisco Mind Share Switching (Marcus & Schalk, 2010)

The Fund Identification Challenge is a tool for learning accounting skills, serving as an ice breaker for accounting classes. Appropriate constructive feedback is provided based on student`s responses, that must agree or disagree with the answer of the past president of the United States. The system has 4 possible answers, representing a combination of true and false responses. The character from the application may provide a true or false answer to the question from the screen, while student may agree or disagree with it. If the answer is true and the student also agree or if the answer is false and the students also recognize it is false, they win. If the student`s responses do not match the right answer, the they loose the round. (Moncada & Moncada, 2014)

Figure 12 Fund Identification Challenge (Moncada & Moncada, 2014)

The interface of the system was modified for the accounting information systems topic, creating the Computer Fraud Challenge (see Figure 13). Instead of president figures, celebrities are used to describe real world scenarios identifying multiple types of computer fraud. The game is played in teams instead of lecturing on topics.

Figure 13 Computer Fraud Challenge (Moncada & Moncada, 2014)

The AIS Transaction Cycles Game accommodates 49 questions with 5 possibilities of responses for each question. Topics like “revenue, expenditure, production, human resources, and financing/investing” (Moncada & Moncada, 2014) are included in the game, that can be played in two teams of multiple members who can also collaborate.

Figure 14 AIS Tansaction Cycles Game (Moncada & Moncada, 2014)

Auction Game is a financial decision-making system placed in a financial context that requires a good emotions regulation in order to perform the tasks. Learning by doing is the motto of the application, as the environment simulates a real trading and investing system. The game provides biofeedback in real-time, through “electrocardiogram sensor that transfers the data via Bluetooth to the game”. (Jercic, Astor, Adam, & Hilborn, 2012)

The aim of the game is learning how to have a better emotions management, helping decision-makers to choose the best approaches in real situations due to the skills acquired during playing the Auction Game. The games improves introspection and emotion regulation, by observing and self-monitoring mental states and by rewarding good emotion regulation and punishing the bad one in the context of financial decisions. The game is based on buying and selling goods in each round from several levels.

Figure 15 Auction Game: Sketch of game rounds (Jercic, Astor, Adam, & Hilborn, 2012)

The flow of each round can be seen in Figure 15. Goods are presented to the user, that has to calculate the real price and then take a decision of buying or selling them. The player earns money for making good decisions, while the bad ones will deduct money from his account. However, the most expensing action is not taking any decision and too many money losses will take the player to the end of the game.

Figure 16 Scene from Auction Game (Jercic, Astor, Adam, & Hilborn, 2012)

2. Conclusions

Serious games are part of many domains, such as personal education, finance and accountability, but also security and academics. Another main domain where “games with a scope” become more and more popular is the corporate environment, as a result of investing in employee`s soft and technical skills. Serious games are great for achieving higher scopes besides entertainment, in an easy but also challenging and intuitive way.

The ESP Game and Peekaboom, the Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) iSTART-ME, ReaderBench, Lifeline, Auction Game and Cisco’s Mind Share are just some of the diverse existing games on the market, that can be played from multiple devices, such as PCs, but also mobile devices running on IOS and Android platforms. Some of the common features provided by the games are the possibility of playing in an personalized environment, from the interface point of view, but also from the level difficulty view. Many interfaces can be configured depending on topics and there is also the possibility of playng mini-games as a reward of good results during the main game.

The advantages of serious games are mainly education related and learning by doing approach. Studies have shown that student nowadays would rather learn from interesting and catchy multimedia sources. Keeping track of the progress and real time feedback are also benefits of “game with a purpose” systems, along with a higher degree of commitment for the learning process than classical readings.

In conclusion, serious games are a powerful tool in people`s education and they provide a domain worthwhile to be invested in. There are many studies regarding serious games, there is much more potential for researching and developing games with learning purposes.

Bibliography

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Clover, J. (2016 , January 14). Text-Based Game 'Lifeline' Named App of the Week, Available for Free. Retrieved June 09, 2016, from http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/14/lifeline-app-of-the-week/

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