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Awal Mula Peh Cun di Tangerang: An Animated Film about Acculturation of Chinese Culture
The Peh Cun festival, a long-standing tradition of the Chinese Benteng community in Tangerang, Indonesia, has faced significant disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The Peh Cun festival project utilizes a 2D animated short film to preserve Chinese Benteng cultural traditions in Tangerang, Indonesia, following the cancellation of public celebrations in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19.
- The film is strategically designed to engage a target demographic of 7 to 20-year-olds by using a cartoon aesthetic and a narrative focused on a young boy and his family.
- Historical accuracy was maintained through qualitative research and interviews with management from the Boen Tek Bio temple.
A Preliminary Survey of Game Developer's Perception on Game Clone: Indonesia
This study examines the perceptions of Indonesian game developers regarding the practice of game cloning—the act of replicating game mechanics or ideas without necessarily infringing on trademarked assets.
- Indonesian game developers generally accept game cloning if the practice is used for non-profit, educational purposes or does not harm the commercial viability of the original title.
- There is a strong industry consensus that current protections against the negative consequences of cloning are insufficient for both creators and consumers.
- Developers advocate for platform providers, such as app stores, to implement more rigorous detection and certification processes to curb unoriginal copying.
Reintroducing Indonesian Traditional Games through an Interactive Multiplayer Table Game: Gobak Sodor
This project addresses the decline of traditional Indonesian games among Generation Z, specifically children aged 9–12, who are increasingly reliant on digital technology and sedentary entertainment.
- The project successfully revitalized the traditional Indonesian game Gobak Sodor for children aged 9–12 by integrating physical movement with digital multiplayer arcade hardware.
- User research identified that the decline in traditional game participation among Gen Z is primarily driven by a lack of accessible space and insufficient early exposure rather than a lack of awareness.
- Expert consultation established that traditional games remain relevant to digital natives only when they preserve original social and physical dynamics while adopting modern, simplified controls and high-contrast visual aesthetics.
Revitalizing Face-to-Face Local Gaming Experience through Mobile Mini Games
The authors, computer science researchers at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta, Indonesia, describe building a playable local multiplayer party mini-game prototype in Unity for iOS, with Android as an alternative platform.
- In the user acceptance test, 92% of respondents answered "Yes" when asked whether the game encourages face-to-face communication between each player.
- Among the six aspects, 41% of respondents (11 people) picked multiplayer support as the one to encourage interaction with friends.
- Before development, 48% of survey respondents said face-to-face communication had really degraded, and 28% said it had degraded by a bit.
Video Games as Tools for Education: Indonesia
Video games represent a significant, underutilized opportunity for educational advancement, offering powerful digital environments that facilitate learning through realistic simulations and interactive engagement.
- Video games offer untapped educational potential by using interactive simulations to teach critical thinking, problem-solving, and complex system modeling.
- The current lack of a unified research framework hinders progress, as existing studies focus on comparing games to traditional methods rather than analyzing effective design patterns.
- Successful educational game development requires the adoption of pedagogically informed design patterns that create a shared vocabulary between educators and game designers.
Sesame Credit: Social Compliance Gamification in China
Sesame Credit functions as a massive, gamified social control mechanism in China, designed to monitor and influence the behavior of over one billion citizens.
- Sesame Credit functions as a large-scale social control mechanism that monitors over one billion citizens by aggregating financial, legal, and social data into a score ranging from 300 to 900.
- The system utilizes gamification to drive behavioral modification, rewarding high scores with shopping discounts and priority services while punishing low scores with travel restrictions and social exclusion.
- Analysis using the Octalysis framework reveals the system relies on 'Black Hat' tactics, specifically scarcity and avoidance, to compel compliance through the fear of losing privileges.
Designing Wayang Kulit Purwa with Gatotkaca as the Character in Game
The primary objective of this study is to preserve Indonesian Wayang Kulit Purwa (shadow puppet) heritage by adapting it into a modern digital game format.
- Adapting traditional Wayang Kulit Purwa into a 2D platformer game effectively bridges the gap between Javanese cultural heritage and the preferences of users aged 10 to 30.
- Successful cultural preservation in digital media requires shifting from static User Interface design to a holistic Experience Design approach that incorporates interactive, non-linear storytelling.
- The design strategy leverages traditional motifs, such as specific mountain and cloud imagery, to maintain the aesthetic integrity of shadow puppetry within a modern gaming framework.
Girls and Assassin's Creed
This research evaluates the impact of gender representation in video games through a feminist interaction design lens, specifically examining user satisfaction within the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
- A comparative study of Assassin’s Creed Liberation (female lead) and Assassin’s Creed Unity (male lead) found that the female-led title scored higher in player competence, empathy, and positive experience.
- Assassin’s Creed Unity outperformed Liberation in metrics related to flow and gameplay challenge, suggesting a trade-off between narrative relatability and mechanical engagement.
- The research utilized a sample of six participants aged 20 to 28 in Taiwan, employing the Harvard Implicit Association Test and the Gaming Engagement Questionnaire to measure user experience.
Toward a Design Theory of Game-Mediated Social Experiences: A Study of Among Us
Researchers at Virginia Tech studied the social experience of the multiplayer social deduction game Among Us, using a diary study and post-study focus groups with students enrolled in an undergraduate HCI course.
- Most participants found the game's built-in text chat unappealing, and participants expressed delight that voice or video chat enhanced the play experience and fun. Most participants indicated that they used third-party conferencing tools to play the game.
- Some participants realised that their real motivation for continuing to play was enjoyment of the social experience mediated by the game, not the game itself.
- Participants described alternating between game-related discussion during meetings and casual conversation at other times, which they found enjoyable and critical to the social experience.
Well Played Retrospective: The Past, Pandemic and Future of Video Games, Value and Meaning
This retrospective, edited by Drew Davidson, Ira Fay, Clara Fernandez-Vara, Jane Pinckard, and John Sharp and published by Carnegie Mellon University's ETC Press, reflects on the Well Played series of close readings of video games.
- The Well Played series began as individual conference presentations and grew into books, a journal, and sessions at multiple events, with the first book published in 2009.
- The journal did not publish any issues for a year because the pandemic slowed everything, so the journal moved from volume 8 to volume 10.
- Richard Lemarchand credits the Well Played journals' Creative Commons licensing and free availability with avoiding gatekeeping that can exclude marginalized scholars, developers, and critics.
Reflections on Ludification: Approaching a Conceptual Framework
Bo Kampmann Walther and Lasse Juel Larsen, of the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark, offer a theoretical article in the International Journal of Serious Games (Volume 8, Issue 3, September 2021).
- The authors state that research on gamification almost always fails to explain how to design a reward system beyond handing out a badge or star.
- Hopson's schedule analysis holds that fixed ratio schedules produce slow activity with a burst toward the end, while variable ratio schedules produce constant, fairly high activity.
- The authors propose defining ludification as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts with special emphasis on story structures and story objects in narratives.
The Meaning of Playfulness: A Review of the Contemporary Definitions of the Concept
This article, published in Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture (Vol.
- The review identified 429 written works defining playfulness, from which 184 definitions were extracted and grouped into six thematic categories.
- The authors conclude that playfulness is defined more by how it operates than by what it is, and describe it as a method of organizing engagement.
- The proposed synthesis is that playfulness prioritizes engagement over external consequence, realness, or convention.
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