GDC: Riot Experimentally Investigates Online Toxic...

Jim Cummings on Mar 31, 2013
Riot Games has gotten a fair amount of press in recent months regarding their empirically-based research on the nature of “toxic” player behavior in League of Legends.  As a result, I wasn’t surprised to find standing room only for Jeffrey...

Presence and Games – An interview with Paul Skalsk...

Jim Cummings on Dec 5, 2012
Back in October I gave a talk at the 2012 conference for the International Society for Presence Researchers.  While there I sat in on a number of fascinating presentations, including several by Dr. Paul Skalski, professor and researcher in the...

ICA CFP – Motivational Uses and Applications...

Jim Cummings on Oct 16, 2012
This year’s 63rd annual conference of the International Communication Association will be including a special pre-conference event focusing on the power of play and the motivational aspects of digital games.  The event will take place in...

Managing player tension with Nevermind

Jim Cummings on Sep 21, 2012
The idea of implementing physiological sensing and dynamic player-system feedback loops in game design has been previously touched on here at MP.   And, more recently, we’ve considered the potential role and implementation of fear within...

Behavior-Change Gaming – An interview with Michael...

Jim Cummings on Aug 28, 2012
As part of MP’s coverage of last March’s GDC conference, I discussed a few interesting sessions on the growing application of games, game mechanics, and player psychology to behavior change projects and interventions.  One such session included...