Our Research

Researcher(s): Steve Wilcox

"Uncommon Places: The Multimodal Art of Embodied Invention" develops the concept of embodied invention, an epistemology and design philosophy that treats multimodal media such as comics and videogames as heuristics for translating knowledge between bodies, communities, and cultures. In classical rhetoric, invention refers to the art of discovering knowledge through the commonplaces those opinions, beliefs, and values hold that are common to a particular time and place. Rhetors would train themselves in invention by studying commonplace books texts that contained common expressions, phrases, and allegories of a particular community, region, or culture. Drawing on phenomenology, semiotics, and media theory, this dissertation puts forward an embodied account of invention, one that correlates knowledge of the world with one's positions or place in the world. In order to make this point effectively, and to demonstrate its applicability to design, a portion of this dissertation is argued through a videogame called Allergies & Allegories.

Learn more about the game and the collaboration with GET-FACTS.

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Researcher(s): Nicholas Hobin

Hobin’s dissertation explores the uncharted territory between animal studies and game studies, examining the representation of living animals in video games. Animals are just as prominent in digital spaces as in real life: they are antagonists, resources, decorations and – most interestingly – they are often defined entirely by their use to human beings. Why do animals exist as human resources? Why are they exempt from human morals?

Hobin’s work looks at video game environments as a reflection of human and nonhuman relations and how animals are treated by the human characters. For example, in Red Dead Redemption 2, animal bodies are often arranged into dramatic dioramas or theatrical taxidermy as opposed to other games using animals as craft clothes, items, or food.

By exploring how animal portrayals are transformed within digital spaces, Hobin aims to understand how video games reproduce cultural biases and assumptions which often exclude animals from moral considerations. Hobin’s research uses these various portrayals of animals to challenge how humans relate to, exploit, and moralize animals in real life.

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Researcher(s): AC Atienza, Alvin Lee, Ethan Li, and Mitchell Loewen

The future of social deduction is here! Prepare a final spell as Prospero. Ascend the throne as Lady Macbeth. Or assassinate your target as Hamlet. Will you fall to obscurity, or ascend to glory?

Captain’s Gambit is a table-top roleplaying game that uses social deception to keep players’ identities secret. Each “captain” – characters that players are assigned – is based on a famous Shakespearean figure. The captains have their own unique powers and hidden information, as well as personal objectives that need to be met to win the game. Captain’s Gambit is inspired by games such as Super Smash Bros, Coup, and One Night Ultimate Werewolf, and is heavily influenced by Shakespearean lore.

The production of Captain’s Gambit began when the designers took a game design course taught by Dr. Lennart Nacke, and created a prototype as a final project.

Captain’s Gambit was launched in Kickstarter with a goal of $15,000 but the team was able to raise $25,250 with the help of 421 backers. As a result, the game is now available for purchase worldwide! The group then co-founded Cloudfall Interactive Studios, and self-published the game alongside a companion app which features a prologue narrator, set-up checklist, and rules reference.

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Researcher(s): Robert P. Gauthier

Robert Gauthier studies online communities, examining how researchers can gain insights that can inform, and even improve, public health practices. He explores the sensitive topic of addiction recovery by using topic modelling from machine learning to understand how Reddit communities provide support. He found that Reddit communities were helping members find activities that could replace addictive behaviors. The communities also allowed people to share negative and positive experiences with members and outsiders, such as family members. Robert found that communities were using Reddit to have these critical discussions because the online platform provides pseudonymity – anonymity while remaining under a re-usable user-name. The pseudonymity is crucial for many individuals to be able to have, or observe, discussions that might otherwise be discouraged or rejected in in-person support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), or other organized therapy. The Reddit communities foster critical and complex discussions such as questioning the religious undertones in AA, or wondering how living in recovery from opiates could interfere with healthcare treatment in a system that prescribes opiates for pain management.

Read Gautheri's research paper.

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Researcher(s): Dr. Shana MacDonald

Dr. MacDonald and her team “Feminist Think Tank” are examining several archived collections of feminist media for a comparative analysis of feminist eras to map links between the varied and rich media practices of the time. They hope to combat flattened, antifeminist tropes that often circulate in the on-going rewriting of feminist histories.

Using a data feminist framework, the project utilizes text and image analysis to (1) determine the prevalence of feminist keywords within a series of collections housed at the Internet Archives and (2) compare their frequency and usage across collections to (3) map which feminist terms are most repeated within web archival records of feminist movements in the last four decades.

The collections include historical scopes such as the Fales Library New York Feminist Art Institute and Guerilla Girls collection, the Sallie Bingham Center for women’s history and culture collection, the Tamiment-Wager-Feminism and Women’s Movements collection, and the Schlesigner Library’s #MeToo Web Archives collection.

Datasets are coded, organised, and visualised to determine overlaps in content, media, and form to un/recover intersectional, queer, trans, and Indigenous feminist media practices to better contextualise these practices within the digital present. Rather than defining how eras of feminist activism differ, the project aims to categorize the ways that these eras overlap in their trajectories and shared solidarities to explore how they inform each other over time.

Interesting fact: This project was the first time many of the co-researchers learned how to code!

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Researcher(s): AC Atienza

Atienza explored merging two major schools of thought in game studies – studying narratives vs. mechanics – by creating a new framework called “Game Poetics”. As someone who is both a games research and designer, Atienza wanted to bridge the gaps between the different theoretical approaches. Drawing from their English language and literature background, Game Poetics utilizes six unique lenses that can be used by both narrative – and mechanic – focused researchers and designers analyzing or building games. These lenses are tools to help look at the subject of analysis (in this case, of games) with a specific perspective. When using all six lenses, one should ideally gain a well-rounded understanding of the game they are analyzing or building.

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Researcher(s): Pamela Maria Schmidt

Video games (like any form of art) are time capsules that reflect societal attitudes, cultures, and fears from a specific era. In The Garden of Humanity, Schmidt argues that games such as Jak II, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Final Fantasy XIII encapsulate contemporary anxieties surrounding climate change and emerging technologies. Each of these games sets the player in a post-apocalyptic environment where technology and human intervention caused a climate crisis.

Schmidt used a multidisciplinary approach to investigate and analyze these games individually and within the (post) apocalyptic genre. She focused on themes of hope before and after the apocalyptic scenario to pinpoint the game worlds’ societal attitudes leading up toward (and after) the event. Apocalyptic scenarios in these games are always caused by human intervention and are followed by a “return to the natural” (humans moving away from civilization and technology to live simpler lives closer to nature) once the events have transpired. Considering the current climate emergency and technological paranoia surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, these games perpetuate the false notion that action is not necessary, because humanity will endure.

What these apocalyptic video games point toward is how human domination leads to themes of dystopia, abuse of the environment, and monstrous technological consumption. Schmidt noticed a great amount of hope in these games rests solely on the shoulders of the ‘messiah figure’ embodied by the player. These games promise that a hero will come and mitigate the apocalypse by learning about the sins of the past, and, therefore, preventing history from repeating itself. If our desire is to be saved, it will be reflected in the media we consume.

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Researchers: Dr. Brianna Wiens & Team

Over the last two decades, antifeminist sentiments (including racist, imperialist, queerphobic, transphobic, and ableist views) have been on the rise, with social media circulating these toxicities daily. Despite repeated calls for regulation and protections few exist. Therefore, people must harness the potential of the internet to learn not only how to protect themselves but how to fight back.

The interdisciplinary project team developed resources for how to best use different social media platforms and practices for advancing digital feminist activism. Through workshops, the research team had participants study and design public digital toolkits to combat anti-feminism. This included analyzing, creating, and archiving digital feminist artifacts (e.g. memes, carousel decks, hashtags, and reels) that can be leveraged when circulating feminist messaging.

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Researchers:Dr. Eugene Kukshinov & Team

Social virtual reality (SVR) is often presented as a revolution in online communication that provides improved opportunities for creative, physical, and social interactions. Yet there is very little data about who is using SVR platforms (such as VR Chat or Rec Room), how they are using them, or even why.

Current VR research is biased towards white male participants, hence little is known about other demographics and how their experiences differ. The team designed experiments that tested immersive human experience in SVR, such as the feeling of "being represented". Participants created avatars and environments, and the research team analyzed how and why users of diverse demographics customized their virtual presence in SVR.

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Researcher(s): Dr. Shana MacDonald

@aesthetic.resistance is a research creation-based intervention into prevailing Instagram culture that amplifies work from 2SLGBTQIA+ and Black, Indigenous, racialized activists and other equity-deserving communities. It resists the colonial, white supremacist, ableist, and capitalist heteropatriarchal norms of the Instagram platform.

Situated as part of Feminist Think Tank, a feminist run digital media research lab, and building on a series of ongoing projects that explore the trajectory of feminist media activism between the 1960s and the present, @aesthetic.resistance provides a database of feminist historical and contemporary media practices that advance "the personal is political" in aesthetic form.

Feminist Think Tank designed @aesthetic.resistance to co-opt the functions of Instagram via a decidedly aesthetic mode of exploratory knowledge production that does not have a predetermined, tangible, deliverable - what they call a "feminist Instagram hack".

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Researcher(s): Emma Vossen

Vossen develops the concept of “cultural inaccessibility” to describe the ways that women are made to feel unwelcome in spaces of game play and games culture, both offline and online. Although there are few formal or physical barriers preventing women from purchasing games, playing games, or acquiring jobs in the games industry, Vossen’s dissertation explores the formidable cultural barriers which define women as “space invaders” and outsiders in games culture.

Women are routinely subjected to gendered harassment while playing games, and in the physical spaces of games culture, such as conventions, stores, and tournaments. This harassment and abuse has intensified toward journalists, developers and academics who choose to speak publicly about bigotry within the culture since the 2014 rise of gamergate.

Vossen also explores her own experiences as a female gamer as a means of reflecting on developments in the broader culture. This includes discussion of various projects she worked on including a short machinima (a film made within a video game) created with Elise Vist inside Lord of the Rings Online entitled Lady Hobbits, the gender and games advocacy group the Games Institute Janes (GI Janes), and her tenure as a staff member and editor-in-chief of game studies publication First Person Scholar.

The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the harassment Vossen faced from gamergate, and members of other far-right groups while writing her dissertation. Vossen asks how women can study games culture if doing so puts them at risk of becoming targets of harassment and abuse. It underscores the cultural inaccessibility of social justice oriented work in academia and at large.

Interesting fact: In 2017, Vossen made a 60-minute radio documentary “The Dangerous Game: Gamergate and the ‘Alt-right” with CBC Ideas that was broadcast nationally by CBC Radio.

Read Vossen's dissertation.

Researcher(s): Shawn DeSouza-Coelho

Places, Please! is a joint venture between The Games Institute at the University of Waterloo and the Stratford Festival of Canada. It is a four-player cooperative mobile game designed to stimulate the acts of putting on a theatrical production at the Stratford Festival. Within the framework of these productions, four players take on the roles of each of the four production departments (Acting, Crew, Stage Management, and Tech). All departments must work together to perform stimulated version of the real-life individual and collaborative duties required of them to ensure the smooth running of the show. The game is unique in that the focus is not on these tasks, but on the complex modes of interaction required between departments in their completion.

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Researcher(s): Diane Watson

Reading Garden is a casual game designed to motivate university students through the long-term motivational problem of reading a course textbook over a semester. In Reading Garden, players grow gardens to level up. Advanced gameplay mechanics are unlocked with a special in-game currency. Players earn this currency by answering a short comprehension quiz based on the assigned readings from the textbook.

Our results from two semester-long studies show that participating in simple cooperative social play motivated players to personally read more of the textbook, while competing using the leader boards did not. Cooperation may be more motivating than competition when applied to long-term motivational problems.

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Researcher(s): Giuseppe Femia

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a tabletop role-playing game that allows players to assume the role of their character, creating a division in persona between the players and characters. Role-playing allows players to explore their own identity and that of others.

Femia investigates how D&D game designers can allow players to take part in the creation and exploration of queer identity by roleplaying their in-game characters.

Often times, the societal assumption that everyone is heterosexual and cisgender dominates game spaces. However, D&D campaigns can serve as a source of support for queer communities through the application of an inclusive and queer-friendly game design framework that challenges this assumption.

Read Femia's research paper.

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Researcher(s): Adam Bradley, Jonathan Rodriguez, Kent Aardse

Rival Books of Aster is a one or two-player mobile collectible-card strategy game that draws on theories of story and myth creation. Players collect cards to create hexes, while contributing to the ongoing unveiling of the mythology in the game. There are over 140 hand illustrated spells that players can use to build custom decks and go head to head against other players. Each spell is also a page in a living story books that translates itself and reveals its secrets as the game is played.

Story arcs and plot points are decided by player actions in-game. In essence, the players of the game are dynamically being written into the mythology of the game as they play. The game features innovative game mechanics and beautiful hand-painted art by award-winning artists.

Interesting fact: In addition to being available on the iOS App Store, Rival Books of Aster is also available on Steam.

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Researcher(s): John Yoon

Sports depend on narrative to function as media, but they are challenging to narrativize because they are very unpredictable. Narrativizing describes a set of loose practices which weave a coherent story from a disparate set of events or phenomena as a tool for making sense of the world. Yoon proposes a model for analyzing the narrative formation in sports broadcasts by tracking the live narrativization.

This project asks: How does the live narrativization construct a story if the ending is unknown? How does the narrativization balance its desires for narrative coherence and unpredictability?

Yoon creates his own multi-layered narrative model based on Roland Barthes’ function-action-narration schema and applies this model to the National Football League (NFL) and the World Championship Series of StarCraft II (WCS) as two case studies of narrative formation in traditional sports and esports. The comparison of the narrativization reveals that both traditional sports and esports struggle to balance the desire to craft coherent narratives with the randomness of a live event. Yoon proposes that esports must fully embrace their unique digital features even if the digital nature of esports violates contemporary notions of what “real sports” are.
 
Interesting fact: Yoon says: “I’ve been a lifelong esports fan, so it was natural for me to study this nascent phenomenon through a narrative lens.”

Read Yoon's dissertation.

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Researcher(s): Betsy Brey

Betsy Brey's dissertation investigates the narrative and community of one of the most successful games of the last decade, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Brey examines the meaning of specific language using “dialogics”, a tool for examining words and language in their present, past, and future social and cultural contexts.

Brey argues that the players of Skyrim form a “queered dialogic relationship” with how the narrative of the game represents time, space, economics, and politics which can either challenge or reinforce larger systems of power. In this context, “queered” or “queering” refers not to sexuality but to the process of creating relationships between narrative, time, and space that do not align with dominant cultural attitudes and norms. Games have traditionally been studied through a heteronormative narrative lens, which Brey argues is at odds with the inherently queer and fluid narratives of video games.

As one example, Brey examines the evolution of online memes and language that originated in the Skyrim community. One Skyrim meme Brey examines was initially about the fictional political and racial boundaries of the world of Skyrim but then was co-opted and used as a racist pro-Trump meme during the 2016 US presidential election.

While Skyrim seems to promote philosophies of freedom, choice, and liberation, it does so by reproducing colonial narratives without attempting to complicate or push back against them. Skyrim falls short of offering more than sympathy to those oppressed by white, colonial, and patriarchal systems. The ways that players engage with the time and space they have at their disposal within Skyrim often align with systems of oppression instead of critiquing them.

Interesting fact: Over the course of her PhD, Brey has played over 900 hours of Skyrim. Both for fun and research.

Read Brey's dissertation.

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Researcher(s): Adam Bradley

In collaboration with Stitch Media and co-funded by Mitacs and SSHRC, the researchers participated in the development investigated Terrorarium, a Personal Computer (PC) game about “wanton destruction and adorable gore in player-made murder gardens”. In the game, you play as a space granny, obsessed with winning the blue ribbon from the Intergalactic Horrorcultural Society. The researchers used the design/development process of creating a commercial game as a case study to further IMMERSe research topics surrounding: narratology, interactive narratives, cultural analysis of games, and innovative gameplay interactions.

The development of Terrorarium helped the researchers understand how the rhetoric of video games and generated visuals in multimodal environments influence young audiences. Using a variety literary, folkloric, and mythology theories, they established how specific actions allow players to engage with the game world, drawing on their real-life experiences with institutions and plants. They expanded the applicability of rhetoric to the study and game design of Terrorarium by examining how the game creates roles for its players. To help understand how environments influence players, researchers also used Terrorarium to understand how to build dynamic, virtual worlds by writing interactive storylines and character backstories.

Interesting fact: There is a live “Moogu Death Counter” on https://terrorarium.games, reaching over 40 million “deaths” and counting. Terrorarium was selected for the IndieCade Festival at the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) 2019!

Check out the game by Stitch Media.

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Researcher(s): Amber O'Brien

The Pantheon of Dream is a digital/physical hybrid role-playing board game that encourages 2-4 players to work collaboratively to craft their own heroic stories each time they play the game. It consists of both a 3D-printed game board that the players build as they play, as well as a digital component that influences how they construct it. The goal of the game is to complete one of many quests by laying paths to certain locations. As they carry out these quests, players will cross paths with creatures, delve into dungeons, and pick up items that will affect their journeys. The Pantheon of Dream is being developed to play with the relationship between two type of narrative: embedded narrative and emergent narrative, in order to explore if doing so increases player immersion. The game undertakes this aim by giving players the ability to weave the stories into the game's narrative.

Learn more about the game.

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Researcher(s): Shawn DeSouza-Coelho

The PoeTree is built upon the principle that community is the answer. It is the first step in a multi-year plan to foster community engagement and to provide financial assistance to those communities.

The installation itself consists of a large plastic/metallic tree possessing one hundred and thirty branches made of steel wire. At the end of these branches is an alligator clip, and within the jaws of each clip is a single slip of paper containing a poem. Passers-by are able to take a poem from the tree at anytime they wish. Nearby is a sign that says as much. Also nearby is a small stand with pens and blank slips of paper so that passers-by can also leave their own poems for others to take.

Here we have a simple exchange between strangers, anonymous if they wish to be, and above all emotionally charged. This exchange is another way to know and understand one another through the written word.

Interesting fact: The PoeTree was first planted in Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, ON on August 27, 2017. The PoeTree was at the Schneider Haus National Historic Site on November 4, 2017 for Kitchener's NIGHT/SHIFT Festival.

Learn more about The PoeTree.

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Researcher(s): Ali Rizvi

Core research themes within the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) are how lived experiences with technology intersect with home and work. Existing research has primarily focused on conventional life and work in Western countries. However, the unconventional is becoming conventional: several rising subcultures are coming into prominence due to socio-economic pressures, aided by social media. One example – #vanlife – is now practised by an estimated three million people in North America. #Vanlife, a modern nomadic movement, combines travel, home, and working remotely by their occupants (vanlifers) who live full-time in cargo vans, school buses, or campers converted into living spaces.

Rizvi investigated how the nomadic nature of #vanlife adapts and innovates technology meant for traditional homes and workspaces into these small living areas. Rizvi and Morayko travelled to Arizona to collect testimonies from vanlifers about how they use technology in their mobile homes, and what challenges they face. The team was able to identify eleven technological interventions to improve vanlifers quality of life. For example, technology can better support religious practices, sustainable work, and even recreational activities
in small spaces.

With these findings, Rizvi hopes to advocate for designing technology and tools that address the challenges that people living outside typical home spaces with different socio-economic factors face. This includes Indigenous communities in northern Canada, individuals living in small apartments during the COVID-19 pandemic, and military bases. Next steps of the research are to further investigate unconventional, and non-Western communities.

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Researcher(s): Marina Wada

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory joint condition that affects patients throughout their lifetime. For that reason, patients with RA must make several medication choices, each with long-term and short-term side effects that provide a complex basis for medication decision making. Our project employed user-centered design methodologies to collect qualitative data about RA patient's needs and desires: for example, we interviewed patients about how they'd envision integrating interactive technologies to existing medical practices, and learned about non-technology-based solutions the patients were developing for themselves.

We aimed to produce research-based suggestions for improving treatment plans for patients with RA that can inform the development of interactive technologies that integrate Shared Decision Making (SDM) elements, a medical approach that considers patient's individual needs and desires with the physician's expertise to reach a consensus on treatment. Ultimately, our study contributed the conclusion that designs in health technology to support RA patients with SDM may benefit by acknowledging the dynamic nature of RA as a chronic disease.

We gained valuable information from across these categories: chronic patient experiences, chronic disease management, lifestyle challenges associated with RA, and decision making. Exemplary finding included:

1. Mental health, sexual health, and family planning as it relates to RA patient experiences were overlooked.
2. Patient agency, which is the ability to exercise autonomy in decisions related to their own health was mentioned to be developed through social support, minor decision making, and gaining greater knowledge about RA.
3. Over time, participants recalled adapting to mental and physical lifestyle changes that RA demanded. This is important because every patient will go through their own journey in figuring out what works best for them as a coping adaptation to their disease; this also helps inform patient agency.

Interesting fact: We interviews participants from the Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance (CAPA), a national non-profit patient advocate organization. For more information go to the CAPA website.

Read Wada's thesis.

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Researcher(s): Stuart Halifax

Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, is used in the educational field to enhance engagement, motivation, and performance. But which factors influence the impact of game elements on learner motivation? Recent studies show that learners react differently to different game elements and that learner motivation, engagement, and performance vary depending on personality, and game preferences. If game elements are not adapted to learners, it can, at best, fail to motivate them, and, at worst, demotivate them. Therefore, it is essential to adapt game elements to individual learner preferences.

Hallifax’s research was part of LudiMoodle, a project dedicated to the gamification of learning resources that adapts game elements integrated into the Moodle learning environment to help motivate learners. The project offered insight into the impacts of specific game elements (including timers, leaderboards, progress, avatars, badges, and scores) on learner motivation when using a digital learning environment. Hallifax conducted this research both in France at the University of Lyon, and as a visiting scholar at the Games Institute. Hallifax created an “adaptation engine” that suggests relevant game elements for learners. The engine was implemented for the LudiMoodle project and used by 258 students in four different secondary schools in France. This work represents a significant advancement for the field of adaptive gamification and provides tools and recommendations for designers to help explore different game element designs.

Interesting fact: This project involved the education authority of Lyon, researchers in computer and educational sciences, instructional designers, teachers, and Education Technologies & Digital Learning (Edunao) the company dedicated to the development of the game elements.

Read Hallifax's dissertation.

Open the poster PDF.

Researcher(s): Elise Vist and Lauren Burr

Alice and Schrödinger is a playful exploration of the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre. Using a combination of near-field communication chips, which users access in specific locations, and bluetooth-based iBeacons, which let users know when they're near something interesting, Alice and Schrödinger encourages users to wander around the building, seeking out snippets of conversation between Alice, an Institute for Quantum Computing graduate student, and Schrödinger, her curious and excitable cat. Tours, even self-guided ones, require users to follow a clear, linear path from one fact to another, restricting them to the path that the designer thinks is most interesting. Instead, Alice and Schrödinger allows people to pick and choose what kind of information they're interested in, and let the architecture of the building and their own whims draw them to different locations.

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Researcher(s): John Harris

To better study asymmetric co-operative play, we developed our own research prototype game called Beam Me 'Round, Scotty! One player uses a dual-joystick game pad to play the action-oriented role of the courageous space captain, Joanna T. Kirk, who must battle dangerous creatures while attempting to escape a hostile alien world. Simultaneously, a second player assumes the role of plucky engineer, Scotty, using a mouse and keyboard to play a more planning-focused strategy role. Still safe in orbit, Scotty players must use the ship's various special abilities such as heal beams, force fields, torpedoes, and teleportation to help Kirk reach safety. By designing specific challenges that deliberately tilt the direction and degree of interdependence between Kirk and Scotty players, we were able to use our custom-built prototype game as a fine-grained, experimental tool to better understand collaborative game play.

Interesting fact: “Beam Me ‘Round, Scotty!” was awarded both the People’s Choice and Judges’ Choice awards at the CHI PLAY 2015 Student Game Design Competition. One of our subsequent papers regarding BMRS studies #2 & #3 also received an honourable mention (Top 5%) award at CHI 2019.

Read Harris' research paper.

Open the poster PDF.

Researcher(s): Dr. Oliver Schneider

The CanHaptics Network is a collective of haptics researchers, industry practitioners, and community stakeholders across Canada, with the goal of improving student training, networking, and connecting with
industry and community partners.

Haptics is a fledgling research field, that emerged out of disability studies and human-computer interaction (HCI), and focuses on how physical feedback in technology (such as vibrations in cellphones or game controllers) creates meaning. The researchers in the network aim to make technology more human by making it physical – pushing out from the screen to be graspable and holdable, engaging with all senses. Although hapticians explore these concepts through interactive technologies, such as virtual reality, wearables, etc., what they emphasize is on putting humans, not technology, first.

The CanHaptics Network accelerates research and innovation in haptics, and provides companies in the tech industry with a pipeline of talented hapiticans. Moreover, the network has committed to using their expertise to tackle social problems that impact Canadians.

The network is driven by researchers from six universities across Canada (and growing!) and its founding membership includes:

British Columbia

• Dr. Alissa N. Antle, Simon Fraser University, TECI Lab
• Dr. Pourang Irani, The University of British Columbia (Okanagan)
• Dr. Karon MacLean, The University of British Columbia (Vancouver), SPIN Lab
• Dr. Rebecca Todd, The University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Motivated Cognition Lab

Ontario

• Dr. Arash Arami, University of Waterloo, Arami Research Lab on neuromechanics and assistive robotics
• Dr. Audrey Girouard, Carleton University, Creative Interactions Lab
• Dr. Oliver Schneider, University of Waterloo, Haptic Experience Lab

Québec

• Dr. Jeremy Cooperstock, McGill University, Shared Reality Lab
• Dr. Vincent Lévesque, École de Technologie Supérieure, Haptic User Experience (HUX) Lab
• Dr. Antoine Weill-Duflos, Haply Robotics

Researcher(s): Ekaterina Durmanova and Joseph Tu

Have you ever felt frustrated when a board game has too many rules? Are the rules so elaborate and convoluted that they are difficult to understand? Do you want to jump straight into the game and just play?

Curioscape is a game that combines the fun of a board game with the thrill of an escape room where a team of four players cooperatively discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks within a limited time frame. Durmanova and Tu wanted to experiment and answer the following research questions:

1. What happens when players start a game without learning the rules?
2. Can curiosity function as intrinsic motivation, driving players to seek out information and continuing playing a  game where minimal instructions are given?
3. Can the escape room format be shrunk and played in small spaces?

Curioscape relies on the combination of multiple Arduino sensors for puzzle and narrative design within the game space. The following items were used to remove the physical necessity of a rule book and the role of a “game master”:

• Touch sensor for detecting and recording physical touch.
• Ultrasonic sensor to measure the distance of a target object or person.
• A digital numeric pad for players to enter lock/pin combinations.
• Drivers providing haptic feedback on some tangible objects within the game.
• LED lights to indicate clues, hints, and successful puzzle clears.
• Audio speakers to play the narrative and background music.
• Chairs combined with ultrasonic sensors and haptic drivers to detect if player is sitting, standing, or standing at a specific location in the game space.

Curioscape was prototyped as part of the student game design competition at CHI Play. Read the abstract.

Open the poster PDF.
 

Researcher(s): Rina R. Wehbe

Why are games difficult? What design decisions affect game difficulty? To answer these questions, our project tests game design decisions in platform games with incremental changes in difficulty. As expected, smaller platform sizes, and quicker speed increase difficulty. However, unexpectedly we found that triple jump is actually less difficult than double jump. We speculate this may be because we are changing the base task instead of increasing difficulty. Furthermore, we also tested changes in perspective (i.e. scrolling along the x-axis, y-axis, or z-axis) and found significant differences.

Interesting fact: This was presented as a paper at the CHI 2017 conference.

Read Wehbe's thesis.

Open the poster PDF.

Researcher(s): Dr. Judy Ehrentraut

You are trapped. Bound by magic by unknown captors. But you are a “Flow Weaver” and can move between dimensions. Travel through different dimensions, learn new spells, and uncover the secrets of this strange world to orchestrate your escape!

Flow Weaver is a VR narrative escape room game that allows you to move between multiple different “flows” as you discover them. The player learns how each unique Flow affects the world and uses those differences to solve puzzles and challenges, learn new skills or spells, and uncover new objects.

Immersion is often interpreted as the feeling of losing awareness of one’s physical body and environment while perceiving the virtual space as “real.” But is that accurate to how we feel when playing games?

Dr. Ehrentraut argues that what is lacking in our understanding of immersion is its relationship to “presence,” i.e., the sensation of being spatially located in a virtual environment. Dr. Ehrentraut’s experiment matched hand movements using a controller with virtual on-screen hand movements to improve a state of “flow” or immersion.

She concludes that rather than promoting disembodiment in virtual space, there is a need to focus more on the player establishing a connection between physical gestures, on-screen feedback, and haptic feedback. Flow Weaver accomplishes these goals and attempts to reconcile theories about immersion with how players reorient their experiences of “being there” in VR.

Check out Flow Weaver on Meta Quest.

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Researcher(s): Gustavo Fortes Tondello

Gamification, the application of game elements in non-game contexts, can improve user engagement, enjoyment, and behaviour toward digital interactive systems. Existing research suggests that the qualities of users, such as their personality, preferences, or identification with the task, can influence how they use a gameful systems. Given how user qualities shape the gameful experience, we theorize that it is advantageous to personalize gameful systems. We propose a method for personalized gameful design with three steps: (1) classification of user preferences, (2) selection of gameful design elements, and (3) heuristic evaluation of the design. Our method provides practical tools and clear guidelines to help designers effectively build personalized gameful systems. We designed, implemented, and conducted a pilot evaluation of a software platform that allows researchers to generate different experimental conditions for the study of personalized gameful design. This way, different research questions can be answered by gamification researchers.

Interesting fact: The Gamification User Types Hexad Scale, which we helped develop as a practical method for classification of user preferences, has already been answered by more than 22,000 internet users and has been cited more than 100 times in scholarly publications as of July 2019.

Read Tondello's dissertation.

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Researcher(s): Dr. Neil Randall

Scotiabank and the Games Institute partnered together on a project that utilizes game simulations and gamification to impact saving behaviours. The Games Institute developed a gamified experience for customers using Scotiabank’s apps and websites to drive financial behavioural change. Designers implemented a “choice-and-consequence” system that simulated multiple financial decisions throughout a person’s life. This process was challenging as the simulation can only represent a limited number of choices and impacts, which need to feel realistic.

To create the game platform and scenarios, the designers used Scotiabank’s “Behavioural Archetypes”, i.e., people in different financial situations. The players start the game by self-selecting one of the archetypes and proceeding with the relevant lifestyle scenario. One scenario involves a simulation of a new graduate moving to a city in response to a job offer. The game simulates numerous decisions related to savings behaviour, spending behaviour, and planning. The team’s goal is for the game to impact user behaviour through a deeper understanding of the consequences of their financial decisions.

Interesting fact: The designers modelled the game after the structure of “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels. The researchers and designers combined their differing expertise around gamification, choice-and-consequence games, user expertise, and player behaviour to create a unique experience that improves financial literacy.

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Researcher(s): Cayley MacArthur

A lack of diversity in STEM fields has been a challenge in terms of recruitment, engagement, opportunity, and equality spanning decades. it is not well understood how new technologies created by the human-computer interaction (HCI) community affect aspects such as empowerment, diversity, identity and equity in minority groups.

Feminist theory suggests that the abstract, gender-neutral language used to talk about people in HCI would elicit imagery perceived to be male. Research suggests that the "people" words in HCI publications (user, participant, person, designer, researcher) all hav ea tendency to be perceived as a male among a male audience, but female have a more balanced perception of "designer", "person", and "participant".

Greater awareness and sensitivity are needed regarding potential bias implied by these terms, that are not representative of the diverse community within and outside of HCI.

Read about the full project.

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Researchers: Dr. Oliver Schneider & Team

Rehabilitation practitioners identify soft tissue injuries through sight and touch. However, becoming proficient at assessing the health of a patient’s joint is difficult as there are limited opportunities to practice on injured clients. This interdisciplinary collaboration led to the creation of a realistic life-sized interactive model of a human knee joint to be used by rehabilitation practitioners.

The technology hidden inside the model allows users to compare tactile responses of both a healthy and an injured joint. Therefore, students can practice manual injury assessment in an interactive and repeatable manner. This high-fidelity prototype is currently going through extensive expert testing by medical professionals. The long-term goal is to have the joint used as a training tool in XR where students and educators can practice their skills in a low-stakes and highly effective immersive educational environment.

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Researchers: Dr. Randy A. Harris & Team

Without an understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical figures (e.g. metaphors, figures of speech, and hyperbole), artificial intelligence (AI) will never be able to communicate and argue as effectively as humans. This multi-year project adapts a prototype of an existing citizen science game created by Harris and graduate students (GoFigure) to revolutionize methods of harvesting annotated data for training machine learning algorithms.

The team is working towards a large-scale free online release of the game in development to collect more players and – through their gameplay – more reliable data for training of AI language systems. In the future, the researchers plan to add Indigenous and other non-European languages to expand the data reach of the project.

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Researchers: Hilda Hadan & Team

Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (aka extended reality [XR]), present unique challenges for users who want to protect their privacy. There are many opportunities for the extraction of personal and potentially private user data for advertising purposes or unethical user surveillance. The interdisciplinary research team uncovered the fundamental lack of understanding that XR users have regarding how XR technology works and what data is collected.

Many of the study participants did not understand that XR sensors can capture very granular and invasive user data, including a user’s physical and emotional responses. The team concluded that improving understanding of threats to data privacy in XR is vital. Social interactions in XR are still in their infancy which allows researchers to proactively develop solutions to protect privacy and improve users’ understanding of data privacy threats in XR.

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Researchers: Emily Shiu & Team

People who use voice assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant etc.) may run into situations when their device does not understand their voice commands. Multilingual households are very common, but research and design of voice assistant technology often only considers standard English speakers excluding a large part of the world’s population.

In addition to cultural background, the technical knowledge of users often affects how they interact with these devices. Individuals will use different techniques and coping strategies to clarify when the device does not understand their voice commands. The team concludes that in order to design and execute valid user studies about voice assistant interaction social, environmental, and psychological factors must be accounted for.

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Researcher(s): Marvin Pafla

Game-based learning tools often use questions to measure and encourage learning but generating these questions can be challenging. That is why Pafla partnered with Axonify to design, implement, and evaluate systems that can apply machine learning to large texts (such as textbooks) to automatically generate questions for game-based learning tools.

Machine-learning can help large companies like Axonify generate questions for their learning management system for frontline employees. These systems will enable Axonify to scale its products to incorporate a greater amount of source material, develop more robust sets of questions, and serve a larger market.

Interesting fact: Former GI Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Deltcho Valtchanov, worked with Axonify on his own Mictacs project. Now working at Axonify, Deltcho helped set up this new partnership for Marvin.

Learn more about the Mitacs project.

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Researcher(s): Marco A. Moran-Ledesma

When someone injures a joint or ligament in their leg, the only way to properly diagnose the damage is through scans and medical imaging, but what if an accurate diagnosis could be performed right when the injury happened through a hands-on assessment? Moran-Ledesma has dedicated his PhD research to exploring this question with the goal of helping health care practitioners design easy to use and easy to access training equipment. This has become the basis of his 3D printed artificial human joint.

Mimicking a human leg, the artificial joint has been constructed using a wide variety of different 3D printed materials with the goal of making this tool easy to fabricate, assemble, and implement as a teaching device for clinical instructors and kinesiology students. Using silicone-based skin layers and internal wires to stimulate an injured or torn ligament, the materials mimic the texture, feel, and density of an injured joint which would improve the hands-on training kinesiology students need when making assessments.

An additional component to the training and implementation of the artificial joint is to incorporate virtual reality (VR) for more immersive training simulations. The use of VR would have students perform an assessment on the artificial joint that is collocated with a virtual avatar in a clinical setting. The result of this hybrid training simulation will better educate students about injury assessment.

Interesting fact: As of 2023, Moran-Ledesma is on version 5.0 of the leg to make it "Doctor Proof" accounting for how often the leg breaks under rigorous testing in medical environments.

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Researcher(s): Ludwig W. Wall

“Light at the end of the tunnel” is an age-old known idiom. Light is what we want to see when we are in our darkest moments, giving us hope that things will be okay. It is with this sense of hope, that we have a chance to be renewed. But what if the ‘light at the end of a tunnel’ actually comes from within? The Light Within aims to show that we all have a ‘Light Within’ that, when at its brightest, can-do great things.

The Light Within is an interactive outdoor installation at the intersection of art and technology showcasing how electronic components can not only become art but can also reflect a much deeper and personal meaning. The Light Within was a part of the Lumière: The Art of Light outdoor light experience and exhibit at Ontario Place’s Trillium Park and, later, at Waterloo’s Lumen immersive outdoor festival celebrating light, art, and technology.

The Light Within functions much like a mirror, but instead of a reflection, a person standing in front of the artwork becomes part of the installation. A camera captures their image and projects it in an illuminated matrix of 2,000 LED pixel ping-pong balls. The process of creating the art piece was met with challenges regarding programming, size, stature, and placement of the piece. The installation needed to withstand various weather conditions as well as direct human interaction.

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Researcher(s): Cayley MacArthur

What can we learn from gender-imbalanced maker groups to support the diverse needs of makers in STEM-focused environments? What systemic barriers prevent the successful adoption of new technologies (like virtual reality) by diverse makers, specifically women?

Cayley MacArthur’s PhD dissertation analyses the impact of equity, diversity, and inclusion within STEM-focused environments by examining women’s experience in these disciplines and spaces. The promise of “making” – that is, learning, experimenting, DIY, creation, re-appropriation, or otherwise – has become a popular topic in human-computer interaction (HCI) research. Making and “makerspaces” are of interest to public and private institutions for their potential to build confidence and potentially inspire new career paths in STEM.

MacArthur examines how these environments are often not designed to be accessible to women, people of colour, and people with disabilities by conducting ethnographic fieldwork with diverse makers. For example, she examines how VR research is designed, conducted, and reported in ways that are systematically biased against women.

This research considers what steps we need to take to make these spaces more inclusive and inviting to marginalized groups.

Interesting fact: Turns out quilting bees can serve as comparative models for game jams! MacArthur attended a lot of both for her research.

Read MacArthur's dissertation.

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Researcher(s): Karina Arrambide

Cinematic choice-based adventure games (CCAGs) offer examples of complex decision-making through player choices. These games are a perfect opportunity to understand player agency through the decision-making processes of players.

Do players feel a sense of control over their decisions in CCAGs? Do they feel differently when watching someone else’s gameplay instead of playing the games themselves? Do players translate their real-life morality to their gameplay, or are they driven by experimentation?

Arrambide’s dissertation provides an in-depth investigation into agency and decision-making terminology to improve CCAGs and player experience. While we can learn a lot about agency and morality from game design theory, it is essential to understand that players and theorists often have entirely different definitions of terms like “agency,” “decision-making,” and “morality.”

Arrambide also conducted multiple studies focusing on player agency and morality in CCAGs. She found that while feelings of agency were increased when participants made decisions, they often felt like they did not receive meaningful feedback to indicate that their decision mattered. She also found that players enjoy experiences where they can personalize their character based on their morality.

This work provides an understanding of the perceived agency and moral dilemmas of games, which can help game developers optimise the mechanics behind player choices.

Interesting fact: Participants in Arrambide’s studies played popular story-driven video games such as Until Dawn, Life is Strange and Detroit: Become Human, in which the player makes many highstakes decisions.

Read Arrambide's dissertation.

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Researcher(s): Séamas Weech, Jessy Varghese, and Michael Barnett-Cowan

The paper “Estimating the sensorimotor components of cybersickness”, published in the Journal of Neurophysiology, presents the findings from our study that measured participant responses to standard neurophysiology tests in relation to later cybersickness in VR. We measured balance control, vection responses, and vestibular sensitivity: we were looking for how well participants maintained balance, how their bodies moved in response to visual stimulation, and how prone they were to dizziness.

Our study found a significant correlation between participant sway patterns during vection stimuli and later motion sickness. Vection stimulation refers to showing participants visual motion cues and measuring whether or not they feel their own body moving as well. We saw that when participants swayed more during vection stimulation, they were more likely to report feeling motion sick during VR. The more we understand about this correlation between sensitivity to vection stimuli and cybersickness, the more we will be able to develop strategies for overcoming VR motion sickness.

Interesting fact: Knowing that vection sensitivity is a strong predictor for VR motion sickness means that researchers now have a way of predicting motion sickness without inducing nausea in participants.

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Researcher(s): Toben Racicot

Abbots of Battle is a boardgame designed to educate players on the everyday challenges of life in England during the late medieval period, which was heavily impacted by the Little Ice Age (LIA), beginning in the 14th century.

The game challenges players to gather and manage natural resources controlled by Battle Abbey, an existing Benedictine monastery located in the town of Battle, East Sussex, England. Playing as the Abbot (the male head of a monastery), players aim to complete resource gathering quests to reduce the Abbey’s debts while competing with the game’s randomized weather system.

Racicot designed the weather system to educate players on the dramatic weather changes caused by the LIA. Players place tokens on a map representing the terrain of East Sussex and produce resources to gain victory points.

Abbots of Battle was designed alongside Towards a Clear Horizon as part of the Environments of Change SSHRC Partnership Grant – a transdisciplinary collaboration which explores, from multiple perspectives, the environmental history of late medieval Sussex. The project aims to better understand the reciprocal relationship between humans and nature in the past and develop digital tools and resources that allow individuals to understand the complex and dynamic relationship between societies and natural worlds.

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Researcher(s): Rina R. Wehbe

Above Water is a digital/physical hybrid game to inform people about the available strategies to cope with two types of Anxiety Disorders - Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder. The game is designed to inspire players with these disorders to share their experience and develop their own personal narrative. For players without an anxiety disorder, the game teaches about existing treatments, intervention information, and ways to support those with mental health disorders.

Learn more about Above Water.

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Researcher(s): Dr. Neil Randall

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) and the Games Institute are collaborating on multiple projects designed to help offenders successfully reintegrate back into society after release.

CSC officers and Games Institute researchers jointly developed the interactive tool, "Rebuild," which will be used after offenders have served their custodial sentences. The game is targeted at increasing players' capacities for obtaining and keeping employment.

Rebuild is part of a five-year collaboration with the CSC to research, design, and build serious games that address each risk factor for reoffending (beginning with risk of unemployment). For example, Rebuild includes interview simulation modules that score the user's performance upon completion. The project is based on extensive research on recidivism (the tendency to re-offend), simulation games, world-building, gameful design, and gamification mechanics.

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Researcher(s): AC Atienza

Many Ontario municipalities have agreed to reduce 80% of their carbon emissions by 2050 (80 by 50). However, most do not actually have a plan for how they will achieve this goal. In response, graduate student AC Atienza designed the print-and-play board game Energize as an educational tool. The game was created specifically for students in grades 7 and 8 to learn about energy consumption and pollution in the Waterloo Region. Atienza worked with experts from WGSI to ensure accurate representation of the science and policy challenges pertaining to carbon emissions reduction.

Energize draws attention to the challenges and solutions of how a city can reduce carbon emissions by placing players in the roles of a project facilitator, a financial manager, and others. Each player-character is equipped with different talents (charisma, efficiency, and resourcefulness) and must fulfill their personal goals. However, as the players complete a campaign rally, conduct research, or engage with their own community stakeholders, they must also work collaboratively with others towards the goal of overall 80 by 50 carbon emission reduction in the Region.

Interesting fact: Cement is in more than you think! It underpins, quite literally, our modern housing and building infrastructure, invisible to most of us (including the 5 per cent of all global carbon emissions that go with it).

Access Energize through the Sustainability Office.

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Researcher(s): Judy Ehrentraut, Elise Vist, Emma Vossen

In 2012, Vossen, Vist, and Ehrentraut created a feminist advocacy group for women in games called The Games Institute Janes or “GI Janes” for short. They noticed increasing hostility to female gamers online in the years directly preceding gamergate and felt the desire to do something within their community to address this sexism directly.

The three graduate students wanted to ensure there was a space for women, including themselves, to comfortably play and talk about games as part of the Games Institute and at the University of Waterloo. During this time, the GI Janes spoke to the media, published articles and podcasts, presented and tabled local festivals, conferences, and conventions, and hosted workshops to spread awareness about the issues present in games culture and the games industry.

A widespread problem that women spoke to Vossen, Vist, and Ehrentraut about was fear and anxiety around playing games with others because of harassment and ridicule. The three grad students decided they wanted to create events where women could come together and play games. They designed these events to be places where women would not feel nervous playing games, where they could discuss the issues they encountered as women, and where they could feel like welcomed participants in games culture.

The GI Janes hosted monthly gaming events in Kitchener and Waterloo from 2013-2016. These included “101 nights” in which they would introduce the basics of a multiplayer game to make it more accessible and less intimidating to inexperienced players.

Interesting fact: The first GI Janes gaming event was held in a basement bar called The Rum Runner in downtown Kitchener. The bar made a custom cocktail called “the GI Jane” and the team set up consoles, televisions, and board games for attendees to play.

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Researchers: Dr. Cayley MacArthur & Team

Marillac Place is a community-based organization that provides residential support to mothers and mothers-to-be facing homelessness. Marillac Place residents participate in the “Praise with a Raise” Program (PWAR) which helps them build essential life, parenting, and social skills for independent living. The team adapted the existing analog PWAR program into an interactive app to facilitate self-determination and improve motivation for residents.

By participating in the PWAR program, the mothers and mothers-to-be facing homelessness can reclaim their agency, and control over their data, actions, and accomplishments. Marillac Place and the research team plan to release the app as an open-source resource so that it can be adapted and adopted by other similar community organizations and can have a greater community impact.

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Researchers: Dr. Hector Perez & Team

Dementia in First Nations communities is three to five times more prevalent than in the rest of Canada’s population and many first responders are not trained to manage dementia-related missing persons incidents. In partnership with two Indigenous Nations: Kahnawà:ke Search and Rescue Team and Peacekeepers in Québec and Fire and Fisher River Ambulance from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba the research team created culturally appropriate training for Indigenous first responders.

The team co-developed three training videos and one 360-degree video that use real-life scenarios to support the search and rescue of persons living with dementia in Indigenous communities. The training videos were designed with evidence-based search scenarios specific to Indigenous communities. The training is currently available in English and French, and selected videos have been translated into Mohawk and Ojibwe.

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Researcher(s): Alex Fleck, Steve Wilcox, Jonathan Rodriguez

Hustle and Flow is a SSHRC sponsored multi-game project that models the simulation and negotiation of trans-boundary water governance in the St. Lawrence River Basin. The first part of the project is a simulation of the elements at play in the basin itself. The player takes on the role of an omniscient manager tasked with maintaining and extending the Basin's ecological and human-related functions, while satisfying the various stakeholder groups that live in the area. The second part of the project asks the player to take on the perspective of a stakeholder group and work together with others -that have also played the simulation- to negotiate what policy decisions are best for the St. Lawrence Basin as a whole, while also balancing those wider needs against their (individual) stakeholder needs.

Hustle and Flow was presented at The Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) conference in Toronto in June 2016, and was presented (as part of a games competition) at the European Conference on Games Based Leaning in Paisley, Scotland in October 2016.

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Researcher(s): Dr. Jennifer Whitson

Indie Interface Project: Many indie game developers struggle to make ends meet. Game audiences are fragmented and difficult to pin down, and ongoing marginalization of women and other under-represented groups is endemic in gaming culture. The Indie Interface project is a partnership with the Indie MEGABOOTH and the hundreds of game developers they work with, examining how indie game communities are addressing these issues. It represents a unique opportunity to better understand what we call "indie interface" organizations: how they provide support and stability for economically vulnerable developers, curate indie games for mainstream gaming audiences, and make gaming culture more open and inclusive. Using mixed qualitative/quantitative methods, we have conducted surveys, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork with developers in the wild (e.g. at their work and where they showcase their games), and since 2016 we have been examining different models for more sustainable and creative game development.

Interesting fact: Most game developer interviews for this project are at massively popular game conventions such as PAX (Penny Arcade Expo). Dr. Whitson's most memorable interview was a fortune-telling booth designed to promote the game Barkley 2.

Read Dr. Whitson's research paper.

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Researcher(s):  Ryan Clement

The Kitchen Table: This two-to-six player co-operative game is built around family meal planning an dietary restrictions. It looks at the emergence of narrative from game mechanics, and how that emergence might be applied to more effective game design. The Kitchen Table game was designed and tested with a study on Persuasive Games and Food Allergies. This project was completed with support from Dr. Neil Randall and the Games Institute, and Dr. Susan Elliot from the Department of Geography and Environmental Management through collaboration with GET-FACTS.

Read Clement's dissertation.

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Researcher(s):  Dr. Shana MacDonald, Dr. Kelly Grindrod, and Dr. Moses Tetui

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, there has been a rise of mis- and disinformation about the COVID virus, mask mandates, and the vaccines. This research engages with vaccine hesitancy and dis(mis)information online to develop a set of tools and best practices to address these issues.

“Media Engagement and COVID Mis(DIS)information” explores the relationship between local Kitchener-Waterloo communities and social media, examining personal, government, medical and professional accounts on social media platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok) to understand how social media audiences respond to and understand information about COVID-19 and the vaccine. Topics explored include COVID-19 vaccines and fertility and pregnancy, the effectiveness of pediatric vaccine for youths ages 5 to 11, COVID-19 boosters, medical exemptions, side effects like myocarditis and pericarditis, and efforts to build trust in COVID-19 vaccines within the local Black community.

This research develops infographics, based on community feedback and peer-reviewed research, about the vaccine’s effects, that are being widely shared on media as tools for healthcare providers, educators, and the general public to use when addressing vaccine hesitancy.

Interesting fact: Drs. Shana MacDonald and Kelly Grindrod first met at the UW daycare centre and have since connected with each other’s research interests.

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Researcher(s): Tina Chan

Merlynne is a single player role-playing game that asks the player to advance the narrative by offering support, advice, and encouragement to non-player characters by using techniques from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). In the narrative, the player acts as a foreign advisor to the heroic knights, wizards, and kings of Khamelot, as a mysterious plague of negativity starts to hinder their daily lives.

Merlynne is designed to explore how gamification with narratives and avatars can influence motivation in online peer to peer (P2P) support platforms. The goal is to identify innovative ways to increase engagement in P2P CBT platforms, and explore whether presenting mental health tools with creative mediums can attract diverse individuals to the mental health conversation

Read Chan's thesis for more details.

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Researcher(s): Marcela Costa C. Bomfim

Pirate Bri's Grocery Adventure (PBGA) is a gameful mobile app designed to improve student's Food Literacy through situated learning approach to grocery shopping. PBGA combines in-game experiences with the real-life activities of planning at home and selecting foods at the grocery store. PBGA is grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), supporting the psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness to motivate self-efficacy for long-term healthy behaviour change.

Brigitte, the pirate nutritionist, encourages players to fill their shopping cart with foods that bring balance, variety, and moderation. She provides meaningful information about foods to support informed decision-making. Unlike many apps, PBGA accounts for important nutrients as well as food group proportions (instead of just calories!), based on each player's health needs.

Interesting fact: Pirate Brigitte, the corgi nutritionist from the app, is my real-life dog. :)

Read Bomfim's research paper.

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Researcher(s): Victor Cheung

Quantum Cats shares the wonder of the quantum world in a new and unique way—through a game. In partnership with the Institute for Quantum Computing, the University of Waterloo Games Institute has created a game that highlights a few of the quantum behvaiours that Einstein called 'weird' and 'spooky'.

Quantum Cats is an Angry Birds-like game that features four cats, who are launched using an electromagnetic catapult across levels to rescue the world's kittens (who are coincidentally trapped in nearby boxes). Each cat's game mechanics correspond to different quantum properties such as Uncertainty, Quantum Tunnelling, and Superposition. The game aims to make quantum mechanics more accessible to the general public, spark interest in quantum computing, and foster public engagement with quantum computing research.

Interesting fact: Quantum Cats is available as a free download in the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store.

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Researcher(s): Dr. John Muñoz Cardona and Samira Mehrabi

Together with older adults, game designers, exercise professionals, kinesiologists, engineers and industry partners, Mehrabi, Muñoz and their collaborators have designed Seas the Day an immersive experience created to promote physical activity among older adults living with cognitive impairments.

Advancements in personalized healthcare using virtual reality (VR) have created opportunities to use games to support a healthy lifestyle. The multi-stakeholder team designed their exergames collaboratively to create attractive, effective, usable and accessible experiences.

Seas the Day uses virtual activities such as Tai Chi, rowing and fishing to encourage players to move their upper limbs, targeting exercises that foster flexibility, strength and cardiorespiratory fitness. This project demonstrates how different stakeholders can contribute to the design of therapeutic games that consider the complex preferences of under-represented users.

Interesting fact: The team created a dolphin in the game to encourage participants to row in the virtual environment. The idea came from a physical therapist who acted as a co-designer throughout the research

Access the game through Meta.

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Researcher(s): Toben Racicot

You are a monk stationed at Battle Abbey who has been sent on a strange quest in Southern Medieval England. A Lord’s son has been murdered. Phantasms have overtaken the Abbey. Giants threaten pilgrimages. And holy temples have become corrupted. What was once docile has turned hostile. Can you save Battle Abbey and become a hero?

Towards a Clear Horizon is an educational roleplaying game crafted by Racicot for high school students to explore social structures, cultural differences, politics, and environmental issues that erupted during the Irish Great Famine of the 1840s.

The game structure is based on Dungeons and Dragons (DnD), a tabletop roleplaying game, where players assume a role of a character and, as a team, explore fantasy worlds together and embark on epic quests. Towards a Clear Horizon assigns a character and storyline to the student, immersing them in the fantasy game world inspired by the history, and including the dramatic flair of the supernatural. Players engage with townsfolk, mythical creatures, and real historical figures. The game quests ask students to use a mix of detective skills, social interactions and, potentially, combat, should they choose.

Racicot designed the game to educate students on the history of Druidic festivals, Celtic mythology, the Irish Gaelic, and Early Modern English alphabet and language, local herbalism, and other unique Irish features that are often overlooked and ignored when studying the environmental impacts of the Great Famine. The game expands students’ education beyond medieval history so that they also learn soft skills, such as collaboration, critical and creative thinking, and communication.

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Researcher(s): Betsy Brey

Brey worked with Ontario organizational development consulting firm ODScore via Mitacs to engage employees at work using the narrative principles of video games.

ODScore approached the University of Waterloo’s Games Institute for assistance in developing a service for organizational changes. Brey’s unique expertise in communications, engagement, and narrative assisted the company with developing human and narrative centred processes that could be implemented during times of change.

Brey uncovered how employees react during organizational change, focusing on employees’ personal narratives of optimism and empowerment. She made connections between narrative, employee motivation, and engagement and found that incorporating her findings around narrative could help to sustain engagement in the long term.

Betsy’s work has been incorporated into ODScore’s consulting services and has informed a new program that ODScore offers its clients. The research partnership between The Games Institute, Mitacs and ODScore offered Brey an opportunity to mobilize her research skills in an industry context.

Interesting fact: During an initial meeting, Executive Director Dr. Neil Randall convinced Christy Pettit, CEO of ODScore that they should look to humanities researchers, instead of just new software, to better engage employees.

Read more about the Mitacs project.

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