Game Illusionization: A Workflow for Applying Optical Illusions to Video Games
Journal
UIST 2021 - Proceedings of the 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
Pages
1326-1344
Date Issued
2021
Author(s)
Wang, Po-Yao (cosmos)
Xu, Cong-He
Wang, Ping-Yi
Huang, Hsin-Yu
Chang, Yu-Wei
Cheng, Jen-Hao
Lin, Yu-Hsin
Abstract
Optical illusions have been brought into recent video games to enhance gaming experiences. However, a large corpus of optical illusions remains unused, while few games incorporate illusions seamlessly. To mitigate the gap, we propose a workflow to guide game designers in applying optical illusions to their video games, i.e., in making more illusion games. In particular, our workflow consists of 5 stages: (1) choosing a game object, (2) searching for a matching illusion, (3) selecting an illusion mechanic, (4) integrating the selected illusion into the game, and (5) optionally revealing the illusion. To facilitate our workflow, we provide a tag database with 163 illusions that are labeled by their in-game visual elements and desired effects. We also provide example editing interfaces of 6 illusions for game designers. We walk through our workflow and showcase 6 resulting illusion games. We implemented these 6 games (with and without illusion) and conducted a 12-participant study to gain a preliminary understanding of how illusions enhance gaming experiences. To evaluate our workflow, we invited 6 game designers and 6 experienced players to follow our workflow and design their own illusion games, where 3 experienced game designers completed 2-week in-depth developments. We report their games, qualitative feedback and discuss reflection on our workflow, database and editing interfaces. ? 2021 ACM.
Event(s)
34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2021
Subjects
game design
game workflow
illusion database
illusion editor
Illusion game
optical illusion
Database systems
Human computer interaction
Interactive computer graphics
Software design
Game design
Game workflow
Games designers
Gaming experiences
Illusion database
Illusion editor
Optical illusions
Video-games
Work-flows
Type
conference paper