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Title:
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Locative Gaming for Team Cognition (LoGTCog) |
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Scholar:
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Zachary O. Toups |
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School:
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Texas A&M University (College Station) |
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Mentor:
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Dr. Andruid Kerne |
[View Presentation ( 307 KB)] |
Locative Gaming for Team Cognition (LoGTCog) is an umbrella project encompassing an ethnographic survey of firefighters and a location-aware game (Rogue Signals) for studying and enhancing team cognition.
Rogue Signals consists of three versions: a "sit-down" simulation created so that the experimental properties of the game can be assessed before the location-aware version; PhysiRogue, an alternate "sit-down" simulator that utilizes psychophysiological measures as a component of gameplay to enhance team state understanding and increase immersion; and the location-aware version, in which players participate by moving outdoors (in development). In all versions of the game, players must work together as a team to find treasures and avoid predators. All but one team member must move in the game world accomplishing these tasks, while being guided by the other team member who has access to information the rest of the team does not, such as the locations of the predators and treasures. Play within the game consists of coordinating and communicating, and it is hypothesized that this play can improve the team cognition capabilities that are critical for saving lives in firefighting and other team-based, information-limited disciplines.
Over the summer of 2006, the "sit-down" versions of Rogue Signals and PhysiRogue were developed and tested. Iterations on both programs have been completed and modified based upon feedback from the pilot studies and the firefighter ethnography. We learned that the game is exciting and fun for the players, providing intrinsic motivation to play it. Players rapidly developed coordination and communication strategies, which emerged in different ways. For example, one team had a member who always used an "o'clock" to indicate direction, which proved ineffective; another used deictic references, such as "left", "right", and "straight", referencing the player's current facing, which was a more effective means of coordinating.
Previous ethnography and feedback from testing led to several design changes in Rogue Signals. For example, players quickly learned the locations of goals and enemies, so we decided that it is best to procedurally position these elements; similarly, the objectives in firefighting training also change (participants may have to find a victim, which could be located anywhere). This work spawned numerous other changes to the system, including a notification system, compass indicators, and changes in game mechanics, such as how players collect treasures and how they move.
We are continuing investigations with the "sit-down" system, and plan to run experiments with the "sit down" simulator to determine if play improves team coordination capabilities over the fall with university and firefighting students. In addition, we have released a paper for the Augmented Cognition conference, "A Design for Using Physiological Signals to Affect Team Game Play," discussing the use of physiological sensing in PhysiRogue.