Slides for a presentation where I gave an overview of my research in August 2019. The talk is about how I have adressed two question that are at the core of my work: Q1 How can we work to innovate in game design and technology? Q2 How can we create play experiences that are individually meaningful?

1. RESEARCH OVERVIEW
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari, PhD
Södertörn University, Media technology, Game Research Group
August 19, 2019

2. OVERVIEW
➤ My background
➤ Q1 How can we work to innovate in game design and
technology?
➤ Collaborative work
➤ Q2 How can we create play experiences that are individually
meaningful?
➤ Projects
➤ Context, situating the work
➤ Future

3. MIRJAM PALOSAARI ELADHARI
➤ Teaching and researching at Södertörn University, Media Technology, and
Independent Game Designer and Artist, Label: Otter Play
➤ Background in literary studies and working as a game programmer
(2000) motivated me to start researching games.
➤ PhD (comp.sci.) on character driven
story construction in games,
and doing synthetic characters
-> Player Characters Action potential
… lots of AI work.
➤ Last 10 years: more game design work

4. ➤ Game Programmer 2000-02, Liquid Media
➤ Tech Lead, Zero Game Studio, Interactive Institute 2002 - 04
➤ PhD Candidate at Gotland University and University of Teesside 2004-2010
(visiting scholar at Georgia Tech, Tokyo Tech and UCSC in periods)
➤ Senior Lecturer Gotland University 2010-2012
➤ Senior Lecturer University of Malta 2012-15
➤ Game Designer CitynetGO,
Franzén&Falk, 2016
➤ Rule Author in Ensemble Project
at American University, Washington DC, USA
➤ Founder of Otter Play (2015 -> current)
ABOUT ME: PAST ROLES

5. MIRJAM PALOSAARI ELADHARI - CURRENT WORK
➤ AI Based Game Design: enabling innovation in both
AI and Design.
➤ Minimalist CI Design (Comp. Intelligence)
➤ Juxtaposing to the
extreme: Board Game
Design -> Minimal cues
leading players/users
towards deep personal
journeys.
➤ Current Project: MindShadows, a game of
emotional support and reflection.
Free download:
otter-play.com.
(printable board game)
Therapy board games,
Tarot story structures for narrative generation,
AIGD, Story Making games, Social Agents.

6. ASSORTED PUBS
The Mind Module - Using an Affect and Personality
Computational Model as a Game-play Element,Eladhari M.P., IEEE
Transactions on Affective Computing, Issue No.01 - January-March (vol.5), 2014, pp 3 - 16.
Tarot-Based Narrative Generation –
Sullivan, A. Eladhari M.P., and Cook M, PCG 2018
Workshop, FDG2018, Malmö, Sweden, August 2018.
Bleed in, Bleed Out – A Design
Case in Board Game Therapy,
Eladhari, M.P., Digra 2018 Conference, Turin, Italy, July
2018
PCG-Based Game Design Patterns,
Cook,M., Eladhari, M., Nealen, A., Treanor, M., Boxerman, E.,
Jaffe, A., Sottosanti, P., Swink, S. CoRR abs/1610.03138 (2016)
AI-Based Game Design Patterns, Treanor,
M., Zook, A., Eladhari, M.P., Togelius, J., Smith, G., Cook, M.,
Thompson, T., Magerko, M., Levine, J., Smith, A. Proceedings of
the 2015 Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG
2015). Monterey, CA, June 22-25, 2015.
Interweaving
Story Coherence
and Player
Creativity
through Story-
making Games,
Eladhari M.P., Lopes P,
and Yannakakis G. The
Seventh International
Conference on
Interactive Digital
Storytelling: Singapore,
3-6 November 2014.
Lecture Notes in
Computer Science
Volume 8832, 2014, pp
73-80.
Re-tellings: The Fourth
Layer of Narrative as an
Instrument for Critique,
Eladhari M.P. International Conference
on Interactive Digital Storytelling 5-8
December 2018, Trinity College Dublin,
Ireland

7. “Q1: How can we work to innovate in
game design and technology?
Q2: How can we create play
experiences that are individually
meaningful?
Central questions

8. Q1: HOW CAN WE WORK TO INNOVATE IN GAME DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY?
➤ Prototyping methods - Design for Results
➤ Build it to Understand It
➤ AIGD -> TOG
➤ AI Based Game Design -> TOG: Technology, Ontology and
Game Genre

9. Q2: HOW CAN WE CREATE PLAY EXPERIENCES THAT ARE INDIVIDUALLY MEANINGFUL?
FIELDS & TOPICS
➤ Interactive story telling in
games
➤ Player-Character AI &
Affordances
➤ Synthetic Characters,
Believable Agents
➤ Social simulation
➤ Co-creation
PROJECTS (ASSORTED)
➤ The Mind Module
➤ Pataphysic Institute MMO
➤ C2 Learn Projects
➤ 3Scribes
➤ Mind Shadows Board Game
➤ Tarot Based Narrative
Generation
Games for Health,
Experimental Games

10. Q1: HOW CAN WE WORK TO
INNOVATE IN GAME DESIGN
AND TECHNOLOGY?

11. AI BASED GAME DESIGN
Background (2011):
AI based game design (or –driven, or –centered)
is an expression that has been used by me
and others for years to describe the type of
work we do.
But what is it?

12. Is it the same as expressive AI?
Is it a design method?
Is it an approach?
...a philosophical perspective...?
In 2011
Anne Sullivan, Josh McCoy, Gillian Smith, and me,
set out to explore this.
not to “pin it down” or provide an ultimate
definition.➤

13. Outset Philosophy
First, we approached AI in games from a philosophical
perspective. Our main sources for inspration were
Dennet’s perspective on Intentionality - abstract away the
complexity and instead reason about the intentions and
goals of that system.
Agre on how players assign intentionality by using words
”beyond the mathematical structures”
Sengers’ perspective on how player construct meaning by
create narratives
➤

14. Then, we looked at our own projects.
We asked:
How are the AI and the game design related?

15. We could see that our process, in the different projects was revolving around how
several knowledge domains and techniques (both AI and other) was used. The
affordances of the AI and the context given by the design: iterations.

16. Domains
• AI architectures
• Game design conventions
• Knowledge domains
• Spreading Activation NW
(MM)
• MMORPG
• Affect theory, Personality trait
theory (etc)

17. Domains
• AI architectures
• Game design conventions
• Knowledge domains
• Reactive planner (CiF)
• Multiagent simulation
• Dramaturgical analysis

18. 2015 AI BASED GAME DESIGN PATTERNS
AI-Based Game Design Patterns, Treanor, M., Zook, A., Eladhari, M.P., Togelius, J., Smith, G., Cook, M., Thompson, T., Magerko, M., Levine, J., Smith, A.
Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015). Monterey, CA, June 22-25, 2015.
Foregrounding

19. 2015
Designing games that use AI techniques in a
new way as a core of their gameplay
diversifies and enriches the role of artificial
intelligence in games. This not only improves
the breadth of the medium with new games
and genres, but also opens up new research
questions, as players begin to interact with
software in novel ways. Developing AI-based
games also pushes us to tackle existing
research problems from a new, practical
perspective.

20. 2016 PCG-BASED GAME DESIGN PATTERNS,
➤ In this paper we refine the notion of AI-based games into a special case
of games driven by procedural generators. We call these PCG-based
games, and describe concretely how they embody the original premise
of AI-based games. We describe why these are uniquely important
among AI-based games, and why the opportunity for literacy and
interaction with procedural generators make them valuable cultural ar-
tifacts and learning tools, as well as fertile ground for new game ideas
PCG-Based Game Design Patterns, Cook,M., Eladhari, M., Nealen, A., Treanor, M., Boxerman, E., Jaffe, A., Sottosanti, P., Swink, S. CoRR abs/1610.03138 (2016)
Link to paper.
Ex. Of area application

22. TEACHING TOG: TECHNOLOGY, ONTOLOGY, GAME GENRE
Technology, Ontology, and Game Genre
teaching game design and technologies enabling computational
main aim: facilitate innovation and to prompt
students to expand their palette of methods
for computational expression as game designers.
Successful teaching approach (paper presented aug 2019)

23. Technology
Ex: AI approaches or emerging
interfaces/hardware
Game Genre
Design conventions in
different game genres
Ontology as Metaphor
Theories, Subjects, System
s
TOG: TECHNOLOGY,
ONTOLOGY AND GAME GENRE

24. THE HIGHER EDUCATION PARADOX
Learn to become a researcher
-> to become a teacher
I didn’t choose!
TOG: An Innovation Centric Approach to teaching Computational Expression and Game Design, Eladhari, M.P., Teaching Games: Pedagogical
Approaches - DiGRA 2019 Pre-Conference Workshop (TGPA:DiGRA2019) August 6 2019, Kyoto, Japan.
PCG-Based Game Design Patterns, Cook,M., Eladhari, M., Nealen, A., Treanor, M., Boxerman, E., Jaffe, A., Sottosanti, P., Swink, S. CoRR abs/
1610.03138 (2016)
AI-Based Game Design Patterns, Treanor, M., Zook, A., Eladhari, M.P., Togelius, J., Smith, G., Cook, M., Thompson, T., Magerko, M., Levine, J.,
Smith, A. Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015). Monterey, CA, June 22-25, 2015.
AI-Based Games: Contrabot and What Did You Do? Cook, M., Eladhari, M.P., Smith, A., Smith, G., Thompson, T., Togelius, J. and Zook, A. Playable
Demo Track, Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015). Monterey, CA, June 22-25, 2015.
Technical Report: USCS-SOE-11-27: AI-Based Game Design: Enabling New Playable Experiences Mirjam P. Eladhari, Anne Sullivan, Gillian
Smith, Josh McCoy, University of California Santa Cruz, December 2011
Paper Prototyping a Pervasive Game, by Elina M. Koivisto and Mirjam P. Eladhari, ACE2006, June 14 – 16 2006, Hollywood, USA.
Design for Research Results: Experimental Prototyping and Play Testing, by Eladhari M. P. and Ollila E. M. I. Simulation & Gaming, June 2012 vol.
43 no. 3 pp 391-412.

25. “Type a quote here.
-Johnny Appleseed
Collaborative development of conceptual models,
frameworks, and building demonstrators.

26. Q2: HOW CAN WE CREATE
PLAY EXPERIENCES THAT ARE
INDIVIDUALLY MEANINGFUL?
I will show selected projects

27. Q2: HOW CAN WE CREATE PLAY EXPERIENCES THAT ARE INDIVIDUALLY MEANINGFUL?
FIELDS & TOPICS
➤ Interactive story telling in
games
➤ Player-Character AI &
Affordances
➤ Synthetic Characters,
Believable Agents
➤ Social simulation
➤ Co-creation
PROJECTS (ASSORTED)
➤ The Mind Module
➤ Pataphysic Institute MMO
➤ C2 Learn Projects
➤ 3Scribes
➤ Mind Shadows Board Game
➤ Tarot Based Narrative
Generation
Games for Health,
Experimental Games

28. PATAPHYSIC INSTITUTE - WORLD OF MINDS

29. HOW PLAYERS DESCRIBE IT*
(Not how I describe it. My description is bound to contain
design intentions, and perhaps not represent what is actually there.)
“In the game you use the characters feelings to cast spells, depending on how you feel,
different spells become available to you. you can affect how others feel by performing
actions such as hugging joking or insulting. long term playing creates relationships
between characters so that the mere presence of another character affects you.” (Player
with test id 16)
“The point of the game is to control the moodswings of your character. The world is full
of the manifestations of different feelings and mindsets and only by interacting with
them/your friends can you "get in the right mood" to counter them. Actions are things
like "hold hand" which would counter a "fear/terror" abomination.” (Player with test id
26)
* When asked, after play-testing: “Picture that you are talking to a friend. Describe how this game is played.”

30. THE PATAPHYSIC INSTITUTE

31. CHARACTER CREATION
Big Five (OCEAN, FFM)
assessed using IPIP NEO

34. MIND MODULE INFO

35. Colossuses of Confusion

38. MIND MAGIC SPELLS

39. Play testing
Player 2
Film
Camera 1
Player 1
Film Camer
2
Game
Master
Player 3
In Clients:
-Log files of play (one file for each
avatar)
Camtasia recordings of:
-voice (microphone in headset),
-Face (webcam),
- Actions (taping of screen)

40. THE HIGHER EDUCATION PARADOX
Learn to become a researcher
-> to become a teacher
I didn’t choose!
Take-away from PI
The Mind Module - Using an Affect and Personality Computational Model as a Game-play Element, Eladhari M.P., IEEE Transactions on Affective
Computing, Issue No.01 - January-March (vol.5), 2014, pp 3 - 16.
Players imbuing meaning: Co-creation of Challenges in a prototype MMO, Eladhari, M. P. Revista Comunicação e Sociedade, Issue on Creative
Technologies, (22), 2012, pp 50 - 75. (pdf)
Game Mechanics and Dynamics of Social Actions in a Prototype Multiplayer Game World, by Eladhari M.P, Proceedings of DiGRA 2011
Conference: Think Design Play, Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands, September 2011.
Pataphysic Institute, Eladhari M.P., Foundations for Digital Games 2010, Monterrey, California, June 2010. (Demo)
Semi-Autonomous Avatars in Games, Eladhari, M.P, 10th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
USA, September 2010.
Semi-Autonomous Avatars in Virtual Game Worlds, Pre-conference to the ECREA 2010 – 3rd European Communication Conference, Avatars and
Humans. Representing Users in Digital Games, Hamburg Media School, Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Ilmenau University of
Technology, Hamburg, Germany, October 2010
Pataphysic Institute, Eladhari M.P., Proceedings of the Sixth Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment International Conference
(AIIDE 2010), AAAI Press, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, October 2010. (Demo)
Emotional Attachments for Story Construction in Virtual Game Worlds, by Eladhari M.P, DIGRA09 Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games,
Play, Practice and Theory, Brunel University, West London, United Kingdom, Tuesday 1st September - Friday 4th September 2009 (DIGRA09)
Rules for role play in Virtual Game Worlds - Case study: The Pataphysic Institute, by Eladhari M. P., Mateas M. Digital Arts and Culture 2009,
December 12 - 15, University of California Irvine, Los Angeles, USA.
Good Moods – Outlook, Affect and Mood in Dynemotion and the Mind Module, by Eladhari M.P., Sellers M, Vol 3, No 5 (2009): Feature Issue:
Futureplay 2009 Edition of Loading.... (Also published in the proceedings of FuturePlay 2008, November 2 – 5, 2008, Toronto, Canada.)
Semi-Autonomous Avatars in World of Minds - A Case Study of AI-based Game Design, by Eladhari M.P., Mateas M. ACE2008, December 3 – 5
2008, Yokohama, Japan.
The Soundtrack of Your Mind: Mind Music Adaptive Audio for Game Characters, by Eladhari, M., Nieuwdorp, R. Friedenfalk, M. ACE2006, June 14
– 16 2006, Hollywood, USA.

41. THE HIGHER EDUCATION PARADOX
Learn to become a researcher
-> to become a teacher
I didn’t choose!
Take-away from PI:
Co-creation, deep meaningful
conversations through deconstruction

42. STORY MAKING GAMES AND C2LEARN
Story Cubes, Once Upon a time, NanoFictionary, Fiasco, Microscope

43. STORY MAKING GAMES
In story making games players, via game rules, use tokens for narrative play
in order to partake in a playful process that results in told stories (narratives).
Important difference from role playing games:
Players do not act via an avatar or a game persona. Instead,
players act as authors or narrators, collaboratively telling
stories about the story tokens represented in the games

44. The C2Learn project aims to introduce an innovative digital gaming
and social networking environment incorporating diverse tools, the
use of which can foster co-creativity in learning processes in the
context of both formal and informal educational settings.
All games in project are for android tablets, download at:
C2LEARN.EU

45. 4SCRIBES
➤ 4Scribes is a creative
story-making game for
groups of 4 players.
➤ The story starts with a short
starting statement or phrase.
Your objective is to develop
the story together with your
co-players. Playing in turns,
you add a little more to the
story text each time…
➤ At the start, you get some cards,
the ‘Creative Elements’. Each card has a word or short phrase on it.
Every time it is your turn to play, you select to play one of your cards.

46. THE HIGHER EDUCATION PARADOX
Learn to become a researcher
-> to become a teacher
I didn’t choose!
Take-aways from C2Learn
-> exploration use of computational methods for the
genre of story making games.
->How combine story making games with the
deconstruction and reconstruction going on in PI?

47. MIND SHADOWS BOARD GAME
➤ table-top play situation offers unique
opportunities for approaching real-world
personal problems
➤ structures inherent in the problems can
be deconstructed, examined, and
understood
➤ Board Game: Mind Shadows
➤ AIM: create play situations where players in cooperation
better can understand situations in their everyday lives that
are emotionally complex or difficult, and by this
understanding find ways to cope with the situations.
Minimalist CI

50. (setup, 2 0f 2)
Defining the Shadow, and dividing the roles
Roles:
- Storyteller
- Voice of the Shadow
- Counter

51. Setup 1 (of 2)
Setting up the board: the emotional state, the super-powers, and the hand of cards.

52. (text above is from rule book)

53. WHAT’S GOING ON IN PLAY
➤ Players try to understand the situation with the shadow: what
actions and events are de-facto? What is structural, what is
immutable, what can be changed?
➤ Trying to understand their own shadow
➤ Experiencing the other’s shadow, emphasising
➤ Getting to grips of how it feels (how it really feels, not how it
is supposed to feel).
➤ Coming up with suggestion after suggestion of how to help
the other - trying the actions and see how they could work.
(These observations are grounded in 18 documented play-tests)

54. how role-players have
experiences where their
real life feelings,
thoughts, relationships,
and physical states spill
over into their
characters’ and the other
way around
(Montola 2013).
BLEED

55. BLEED
Bleed is central to Mind Shadows - not a
side effect, but part of the design.
But: the more malleable
the play, and the more
sensitive, player-
authored Shadow: the
deeper the journey.

56. BLEED
Bleed is central to Mind Shadows - not a
side effect, but part of the design.
But: the more malleable
the play, and the more
sensitive, player-
authored Shadow: the
deeper the journey.
Framing the play session as a
safe space is
CRITICAL!
(Critical in the sense that it helps
approach difficult topics,
and that there is a readiness to
deal with what may come up)

57. SAFE SPACE THROUGH GAME MASTERING

61. TAROT BASED NARRATIVE
GENERATION

62. ➤ http://www.asdesigned.com/tarot/

65. TAROT BASED NARRATIVE GENERATION RESOURCES
➤ Application: http://www.asdesigned.com/tarot/
➤ Paper: Tarot-Based Narrative Generation – Sullivan, A.
Eladhari M.P., and Cook M, PCG 2018 Workshop, FDG2018,
Malmö, Sweden, August 2018.
➤ Code: https://github.com/anneandkita/tarot

66. Re-tellings: The Fourth Layer of Narrative as an Instrument for Critique, Eladhari M.P. International Conference
on Interactive Digital Storytelling 5-8 December 2018, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
The Story Pile - Representing Story in the board game Mind Shadows, Eladhari M.P. International Conference on
Interactive Digital Storytelling 5-8 December 2018, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Tarot-Based Narrative Generation – Sullivan, A. Eladhari M.P., and Cook M, PCG 2018 Workshop, FDG2018,
Malmö, Sweden, August 2018. Link to paper.
Bleed in, Bleed Out – A Design Case in Board Game Therapy, Eladhari, M.P., Digra 2018 Conference, Turin, Italy,
July 2018. (Slides at SlideShare. Link to paper.)
Interweaving Story Coherence and Player Creativity through Story-making Games, Eladhari M.P., Lopes P, and
Yannakakis G. The Seventh International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling: Singapore, 3-6 November
2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 8832, 2014, pp 73-80.

67. CONTEXT
RESEARCH
PRACTITIONERS
METHOD

68. ACADEMIC CONTEXT
GAME STUDIES & DESIGN
➤ DIGRA
Digital Games Research
Associations
➤ FDG
Foundations of Digital Games
➤ ICIDS
International conference on
Interactive Digital Storytelling
COMPUTATION AND AI
➤ CIG
Computational Intelligence in
Games (IEE)
➤ AIIDE
Artificial Intelligence and
Interactive Digital
Entertainment (AAAI)
➤ Seminars at Dagstuhl, Banff,
Shonan Centers
Journals Gaming and Simulation, Game Studies Journal, Transactions on
Computational intelligence in Games. (recently renamed COG…TOG)

69. ACADEMIC CONTEXT FACILITATING DIALOG
WORKSHOPS
Co-located with FDG/DIGRA/
AIIDE
➤ Prototyping methods
➤ Social Believability
➤ Non Player Characters
➤ UX of AI
➤ Teaching Games: Pedagogical
Approaches
BOARDS
➤ SAGDS (Society for the
Advancement of the Study of
Digital Games)
➤ HEVGA (Higher Education
Video Game Alliance)
➤ … etc, misc conf-chairing.

70. PRACTITIONERS
GAME DESIGN COMMUNITY AND
➤ GDC (nominating game of
year)
➤ Project Horseshoe (learning,
sharing)
➤ IndieCade (judge)
➤ Game Jams (research & dev)
AI COMMUNITY
➤ AI Game Programmer’s guild

71. METHOD
➤ Prototyping
➤ “Build it to understand
it”
➤ Play testing
➤ “Design for results”
➤ Analysis, Reflection
QUAL

72. DTGPA 2019 Workshopp
Constructive Alignment in
Teaching Game Research
in Game Development
Bachelors Programme
Petri Lankoski &
Mirjam P Eladhari
TEACHING GAMES:
PEDAGOGICAL
APPROACHES - DIGRA
2019 PRE-
CONFERENCE
WORKSHOP
(TGPA:DIGRA2019)
AUGUST 6 2019, KYOTO,
JAPAN.

73. Part 1
Workshops based on a structured research task
Scripted data gathering and analysis
Data gathering methods
● Observations
● Interviews
● Questionnaire Data analysis methods
● Coding of observational
data
● Thematic analysis
● Quantitative methods (t-
test, ANOVA, correlation)
Research designs, research
ethics and students read
studies using the said
methods

74. ● Students are expected to follow the
approach in one preselected
research paper
● Changing research question to
something analogous is
encouraged
● If quant is chosen, mixing
measurement instrument and a
study is encouraged
● Supervision
Part 2

75. Part 2
Quantitative studies
Instruments
Study examples
Qualitative studies
Stimulated recall
Interview, thematic analysis
Observations
Show list TVTM2
HT18 Assignment
Description.pdf

76. FUTURE WORK
➤ Approach fundamental questions, with immediate approaches:
➤ Mixed initiative creation
➤ Story games
➤ Social simulation (‘social physics’)
➤ System building as an artistic practice
➤ AI Based Game Design -> TOG Approach, PCG approach
➤ Methods for understanding and critiquing games
➤ Application areas:
➤ Games for health (reflective, therapeutic)
➤ Art pieces/experimental games

77. IMMEDIATE OUTLOOK (SPECIAL TRACTION RIGHT NOW,)
Game Design Research Methods (in teaching, and in co-
authoring book with Petri Lankoski)
Augmenting story making board games
Conceptualising 4th Layer of narrative
further
COST Network: Narrative Complexity
Benchmarking of Interactive Narrative
systems:
➤ Affordances of Algorithms and
Engines.
➤ Evaluation metrics for INS
Story telling in games

78. RECAP
➤ My background
➤ Q1 How can we work to innovate in game design and
technology?
➤ Collaborative work
➤ Q2 How can we create play
experiences that are
individually meaningful?
➤ Projects
➤ Context, situating the work
➤ Future

79. THANK YOU
mirjam.palosaari.eladhari@sh.se