Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) conducted the Skins workshop to explore a pedagogy that integrated North American Indigenous cultural frameworks into the design of video games and virtual environments. Skins provides instruction in digital design, art, animation, audio and programming within a context of Aboriginal stories and storytelling techniques. In the pilot workshop with Mohawk youth at the Kahnawake Survival School, students developed interactive environments based on traditional stories from their community in a process that required them to reflect on how they knew those stories, who had told them, and which stories were appropriate for such remediation. In the process, AbTeC found that the discussions about these stories in the context of the technical skills development provided substantial motivation for both further inquiry into the stories and greater participation in the skills development. This paper describes the curriculum and strategies of the Skins pilot workshop.

Game industry-academic relationships are traditionally related to technology development and education, but more research-oriented partnerships outside of direct technology development and education are forming. With these types of partnerships come stumbling blocks that must be resolved for successful outcomes. Meanwhile, user-oriented research is becoming an essential component in game production due to its utility in guiding the quality of game products. Academia can help inform user studies, which calls for industry-academic partnerships. This opportunity has enabled and stimulated the collaboration between Simon Fraser University and Bardel Entertainment in Vancouver, British Columbia. This paper discusses the importance of game industry and academic collaboration, current opportunities, and strategies based on the SFU-Bardel partnership. Two in-progress projects are detailed: developing novel user testing methods and guidance on design through navigation analysis and playtesting sessions.

It is common sense that people don't play games that are too difficult for them. Thus Game developers need to understand the performance abilities of players. Several studies suggest a clear dissimilarity in video game playing abilities between different genders and age groups. In this paper, we report on a study investigating impact of age, gender and previous gaming experience on gameplay performance. The study explored the performance of 60 kids 6-16 years old within three video games: Rock Band 2, Lego Star Wars and Kameo. The paper outlines clear impact of age and gender and less prior gaming experience on performance parameters: score and game progression.

Cooperative design has been an integral part of many games. With the success of games like Left4Dead, many game designers and producers are currently exploring the addition of cooperative patterns within their games. Unfortunately, very little research investigated cooperative patterns or methods to evaluate them. In this paper, we present a set of cooperative patterns identified based on analysis of fourteen cooperative games. Additionally, we propose Cooperative Performance Metrics (CPM). To evaluate the use of these CPMs, we ran a study with a total of 60 participants, grouped in 2-3 participants per session. Participants were asked to play four cooperative games (Rock Band 2, Lego Star Wars, Kameo, and Little Big Planet). Videos of the play sessions were annotated using the CPMs, which were then mapped to cooperative patterns that caused them. Results, validated through inter-rater agreement, identify several effective cooperative patterns and lessons for future cooperative game designs.

Understanding players and their game playing behavior is a growing area of research that is currently being explored by many game companies, including Electronic Arts, Hobbo Entertainment, and XEODesign. In this paper, we report on a study we conducted to understand the influence of age, gender, and previous gaming experience on customization activities of game players in the younger age group within games. We note that player behavior in such scenarios can be used to improve game design and maybe lead to new player models. The results show significant differences between genders within our sample and the type of activities and items used within character and level customizations. We also found some correlations between previous gaming experience and strategies users take to customize their levels, as well as the type of customization activities they engage in. These results will be discussed in this paper as they contribute several design lessons for designs of games or virtual worlds that involve customizations.