Games@GeorgiaTech is a new institute-wide initiative that leverages Georgia Tech's leadership role in video games research and education by aggregating and incubating interdisciplinary games research and academic activities across the campus. 

As part of this initiative, the Inaugural Games@GeorgiaTech Showcase will take place Aug. 27 from 5-8 p.m. at the Technology Square Research Building. The event will be in conjunction with the Digital Games Research Association Conference (DiGRA) being hosted at Georgia Tech August 26-29.  

At the Aug. 27 Games@GeorgiaTech Showcase, playable demos, complete games and research will be presented by faculty and researchers in the digital game space. Come meet these experts and see "What's in a Game?" at Georgia Tech.

Games and Research

Aug. 27, 5-8 p.m., Technology Square Research Building

**Demonstrations Listed By Floor Location**

Babel Build

Demo Description: Babel Build is a cooperative construction game meant to forge personal interactions between people of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It is played with large building blocks in public places where people of different cultures pass every day but rarely interact. All communication in the game is done via gesturing instead of speech. 

Lab(s): Emergent Game Group 

Room Number: 113 

Ellis Island MMOG

Demo Description: Ellis Island is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game about immigration which immerses players in the historical era during which Ellis Island was the main port of entry to the United States. The game puts players in the role of newly-arrived immigrants trying to learn the language, earn an income, and reach their aspirations. All the while, they must face social and economic challenges as well as racial tensions. Framed within historical contexts and events, the game is designed to appeal to a multigenerational audience, inspiring families to discuss their own immigrant stories, and reminding us of the vital role that immigrants have played in America's success. 

Lab(s): Emergent Game Group 

Room Number: 113 

eStatdium Friend Finder (working title)
Demo Description: <p>Students in the Emergent Game Group have joined forces with Ed Coyle and faculty at the School of Engineering&#39;s VIP (Vertically-Integrated Projects) Program to create new applications for its eStadium mobile system, designed to enhance the stadium experience for college sporting events. The Friend Finder (working title) will help event spectators find and locate friends on their Facebook friends&#39; list within the stadium, as well as create a platform for a variety of other social entertainment experiences to take place within stadium and other public venues. The demo will show basic functionality of locating someone on your Facebook friends list in the TSRB building.

Lab(s): Emergent Game Group 

Room Number: 113 

Mermaids MMOG

Demo Description: Mermaids is a massively multiplayer online game set in an underwater world in which players take the roles of hatchlings coming to life in the ruins of a long-extinct mermaid culture. The over-arching goal and storyline is to rebuild the lost Mermaid culture and reclaim their various skills and cultural practices, while at the same time trying to avoiding the mistakes that caused the extinction of their ancestors. Mermaids is designed as an experiment in emergent game play, with specific affordances designed to promote social emergence.This presentation will include a live demo of the game, plus a poster on the modular mermaid construction system currently being developed by an undergraduate student research team. 

Lab(s): Emergent Game Group 

Room Number: 113 

Polaroid Planetoid

Demo Description: Polaroid Planetoid is a video game developed for Dr. Celia Pearce's "Game Design as a Cultural Practice" class. It puts you in the role of an aspiring photographer who adventures to an unexplored planet to take pictures of new creatures. By staging your shots carefully, you can gain reputation at the "Intergalactic Geographic" magazine, earning promotions and new power-ups to help you explore the vast world of Notterra. Notterra is populated by a variety of interesting creatures, and only by learning their varying behaviors can you hope to become the head photographer. 

Lab(s): Emergent Game Group 

Room Number: 113 

Nerdherder, an Augmented Reality Board Game

Demo Description: NerdHerder is a motion-controlled table-top augmented reality puzzle game. Herd nerds through a distracting office space! Help them avoid managers, deal with annoying paperwork, overcome their fear of sports, and chase down donuts, coffee and techie toys! Nerdherder is a product of the Augmented Reality Game Studio, a collaboration between the Georgia Tech's Augmented Environments Lab, SCAD-Atlanta, the Berklee College of Music and Qualcomm.

Lab(s): Augmented Environments Lab 

Room Number: 233 

Graphic Novel Generation
Demo Description: We apply artificial intelligence techniques to assisting nontechnical users with authoring their own digital graphic novels and comic books. The Comicbot system performs the task of automatic composition and layout based on a given story. We demonstrate the system in the domain of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

Lab(s): Entertainment Intelligence Lab 

Room Number:  233

Living Room Play Environment

Demo Description: This project stands to create a virtual environment in which humans can engage with an A.I. agent in cooperative play through the Microsoft Kinect. Current work revolves around the creation of this environment, and solving sensing problems the Microsoft Kinect alone cannot.

Lab: ADAM Lab 

Room Number: 325

VAI: Expressive Cybernetic Movement

Demo Description: Viewpoints AI (VAI) employs contemporary movement theory to create an interactive installation that allows an interactor to gesturally interact with an AI-controlled performer. Audience members are welcome to explore the installation as an interactor or visit hourly for curated performances in collaboration with Out of Hand Theater.  

Lab: ADAM Lab 

Room Number: 325

Companion iPad apps + Master's Projects

Demo Description: The Experimental Television Lab explores the future of narrative forms in the new digital medium that is emerging as TV converges with computational formats. We create prototypes of advanced secondary screen companion applications on the iPad. Current smartphones and tablets are capable of much more than just using them to change channels on a media center or television. Because of their processing power, it is possible to control the content on the television screen in a whole new way. 

Lab: Experimental Television Lab 

Room:  322 

Don't Open That Door

Demo Description: Don't Open That Door is a gesture-based interactive narrative project set in the universe of the TV show Supernatural. The project leverages expectations of the horror genre and fan knowledge of the show to elicit expressive interactions and provide satisfying dramatic responses within a seamless scenario in order to create dramatic agency for the interactor. We use verbal, audio- visual, reactive, and mimetic techniques to script the interactor. From our research, design process, and user observations, we draw conclusions about managing user expectations and about the interaction and visual design components of gesture-based interactive systems.  

Lab: Experimental Television Lab 

Room Number:  322

Storymap (Justified)
Demo Description: Long form TV narratives present multiple continuing characters and story arcs that last over multiple episodes and even over multiple seasons. Writers increasingly take pride in creating coherent and persistent story worlds with recurring characters and references to backstory. Since viewers may join the story at different points and different levels of commitment, they need support to orient them to the fictional world, to remind them of plot threads, and to allow them to review important story sequences across episodes. Using the affordances of the digital medium we can create navigation patterns and auxiliary information streams to minimize confusion and maximize immersion in the story world. In our application, the iPad is used as a secondary screen to create a character map synchronized with the TV content, and to support navigation of story threads across episodes.  

Lab: Experimental Television Lab 

Room Number:  322

Heuristica

Demo Description: Heuristica is a 3D immersive game which is built for researching approaches that teach students to recognize and mitigate cognitive biases. It uses a set of scenarios on a space station to perform tasks such as diagnosing and repairing problems or observing and evaluating game characters performing tasks. The student is evaluated on interactions in the 3D environment and on answers to questions provided by text or audio. We are experimenting with using intelligent tutoring approaches which include the use of a Student Model to guide gameplay based on student performance. 

Lab: Georgia Tech Research Institute

Room Number:  333

Glitch Game Testers

Demo Description: GLITCH: GAME TESTERS was a group of high school students who demonstrated a passion for gaming and a desire to learn about the game industry. This Quality Assurance (QA) team operated from 2009 - 2012 working full-time in the summers and part-time during the school years testing games and entertainment applications. In these three years 33 young men participate in the program, of those who have completed high school most have gone on to college to focus on computing or digital media studies. The students’ QA job training included introductory computer science courses. We hope Glitch developed future game programmers, designers, and artist to improve the diversity of the game industry. But no matter what they choose to do next, this real world work experience will assist them in their careers. Glitch is a research project conducted by Georgia Institute of Technology and Morehouse College and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Lab: http://www.glitchtest.com

Room Number:  333

Gaming in Aging

Demo Description: In this project we have been exploring cognitive training for older adults. Over the past 2 years we have performed experiments to understand what activities result in cognitive gains and are not incorporating these findings into a custom cognitive game called "Food for Thought." The specific goals of this research program are to: understand how video games can contribute to improvements in cognition what properties of the gaming environment (novelty, active attention, and/or social interaction) are critical for cognitive improvement create an older adult specific game that loads on the critical properties identified empirically test the efficacy of this theoretically designed game to produce the largest gains in the cognitive performance of older adults.

Lab: Interactive Media Technology Center 

Room Number: 333

Medication Delivery Game
Demo Description: The Medication Delivery Game is a serious game with the dual purpose of educating nurses on some of the challenges in medication delivery as well as a research tool for observing how the layout of space impacts nurse behavior and performance. In this demonstration we present reconstructions of existing Intensive Care Units (ICU) as well as ones yet to be built. The objective of the game is to care for your patients by correctly delivering and administering medication to aid in recovery. Points are awarded for providing the correct medication, in the right amount, and at the right time.  

Room Number: 333

VGDev: Attack of the Cubes

Demo Description: Attack of the Cubes is a non-lethal, puzzled based first person shooter created during Spring 2013 semester of VGDev. In this story-based adventure you play as the last surviving member of a lab transferred into “Euclidean Space”. Now guided by the central command computer RE-Ject you must clear out ten levels making use of the various guns developed by your ex-lab mates, all while avoiding the bizarre beasts of Euclidean space.

VGDEV Student Club

Room Number:  333

 VGDev: Black Oak Manor

Demo Description: "Don't dare enter alone..." An asymmetric multiplayer game pitting up to four human investigators against one monster in a classic gothic horror mansion. Procedurally generated haunted houses make the game different every time it is played. Gather weapons, plot with your friends, and vanquish evil before it vanquishes you! Produced in two semesters for VGDev, the game is currently submitted to IndieCade 2013, and is still undergoing development.
VGDEV Student Club

Room Number:  333

VGDev: Fanboy

Demo Description: Fanboy is a game created by VGDev in the Fall 2012 semester on a team lead by Kelly Snyder. An endless runner, you play as the eponymous Fanboy, flying through space on your balloon-chair. To survive and continue running you'll need to dodge three different birds, or kick them for a bonus. See how far you can go!
VGDEV Student Club 

Room Number:  333

VGDev: Num Noms

Demo Description: An iPad game that teaches children how to count in order. Children can choose from 4 themes. The goal of the game is to lead a character between moving objects, touching only the next number in the sequence. 

VGDEV Student Club 

Room Number:  333

VgDev: Tibidabo

Demo Description: Loved playing Galaga back in the day but want something a bit more hi-res? Tibidabo is the game for you! Blast your way through a variety of enemies, and two challenging bosses, leveling up your ship with speed and weapon boosts along the way. Tibidabo was created by a team lead by Paco Swift in the Spring 2013 semester of VGDev (http://vgdev.org/). It has the distinction of being the most successful game of the Spring 2013 VGDev Campus Demo. 

VGDEV Student Club

Room Number:  333

VgDev: Zylatov Sisters

Demo Description: The robots came in the night with no warning. Only two powerful sisters can fight back to save us all. You are those sisters. Developed in the Fall 2011 semester of VGDev, Zylatov Sisters is a fast-paced, arcade-style cooperative game, and by far one of the most well played VGDev games of all time. Play through 19 levels as either Anya or Asya, or grab a friend and work together to take down the robot menace. 

VGDEV Student Club 

Room Number:  333