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Dr. Andy Nealen

Monday, November 30, 2009, 12:00pm - 07:00pm

Rutgers University, Computer Science

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Video game design has experienced a renaissance over the past decade.Parallel to the multi-million dollar games industry, independent gamedevelopers have been a constant and growing source of innovation:instead of taking  years and big budgets, such developers create smallprototypes and game experiments, and focus on what it takes to makegames enjoyable. In this talk I will demonstrate some recent notableexamples, and argue that it is the simplicity of the abstraction thatmakes these advances possible. Furthermore, I will discuss the conceptof the "interaction uncanny valley", by which I describe howdevelopments in visualization and animation have overtaken virtualinteraction by orders of magnitude. Along these lines I will presentsome suitable abstractions of visuals, interactions and simulationsthat can be leveraged to alleviate this problem. The talk willconclude with some open problems and possible avenues for furtherresearch.

Backround Readings:

Game Feel: The Secret Ingredient, Steve Swink

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2322/game_feel_the_secret_ingredient.php?print=1"> size=4 face="times new roman, times, serif">http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2322/game_feel_the_secret_ingredient.php?print=1

http://www.steveswink.com/principles-of-virtual-sensation/">http://www.steveswink.com/principles-of-virtual-sensation/

The uncanny valley hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Independent Games

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/">http://www.indiegames.com/blog/