Player Research and Psychology
Pinball Research at School
Utrecht University performed play experiments at Basisschool De Odyssee (Utrecht) to understand the positive effects of playing for children. To what extent does playing together promote self-disclosure? Specifically, the researchers were interested in to what extent playing together creates feelings of safety and social connectedness for children, and to what extent those feelings promote self-disclosure,
In the news: About the pleasures of blood and violence in games.
Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant has published a longread article investigating the pleasures of blood and violence in games with two Utrecht researchers reflecting on how violence has become part of the gameplay experience, and how it may affect players.
Game Research @CHI PLAY 2024!
The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY) was recently held in Tampere, Finland. Our researchers were strongly involved in the organization (serving as papers chair, student volunteer chair, and workshop organizers) and presented a variety of contributions.
Game Research @FDG 2024!
The International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) invites any-and-all research contributions that advance the study, understanding, and knowledge of digital games. From traditional academic submissions (e.g., full papers and short papers) to interactive playable experiences (e.g., full games or demos), to panel proposals, doctoral consortium applications, and beyond, FDG strives to provide
Game Research at CHI 2024
The ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems occurred from May 11-16, 2024 in Honolulu. Our games researchers from the Utrecht Center for Game Research attended and presented a variety of contributions.
Social Animation
Investigating techniques for computing for such socially-driven multi-character animations.
Affective Body Animation
The way users control their avatars should be an easy and natural way.
Social animations for virtual humans in games
A conversation with Zerrin Yumak, assistant professor at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences.
Sensing emotion in video
Finding models to train interaction recognition and how to detect such interactions in both space and time from video.