title: Feedback-Based Gameplay Metrics and Gameplay Performance Segmentation: An audio-visual approach for assessing player experience.

authors: Marczak, Raphaël

subjects: Player experience

abstract: Gameplay metrics is a method and approach that is growing in popularity amongst the game studies research community for its capacity to assess players’ engagement with game systems. Yet, little has been done, to date, to quantify players’ responses to feedback employed by games that conveys information to players, i.e., their audio-visual streams. The present thesis introduces a novel approach to player experience assessment - termed feedback-based gameplay metrics - which seeks to gather gameplay metrics from the audio-visual feedback streams presented to the player during play. So far, gameplay metrics - quantitative data about a game state and the player's interaction with the game system - are directly logged via the game's source code. The need to utilise source code restricts the range of games that researchers can analyse. By using computer science algorithms for audio-visual processing, yet to be employed for processing gameplay footage, the present thesis seeks to extract similar metrics through the audio-visual streams, thus circumventing the need for access to, whilst also proposing a method that focuses on describing the way gameplay information is broadcast to the player during play.

In order to operationalise feedback-based gameplay metrics, the present thesis introduces the concept of gameplay performance segmentation which describes how coherent segments of play can be identified and extracted from lengthy game play sessions. Moreover, in order to both contextualise the method for processing metrics and provide a conceptual framework for analysing the results of a feedback-based gameplay metric segmentation, a multi-layered architecture based on five gameplay concepts (system, game world instance, spatial-temporal, degree of freedom and interaction) is also introduced.

Finally, based on data gathered from game play sessions with participants, the present thesis discusses the validity of feedback-based gameplay metrics, gameplay performance segmentation and the multi-layered architecture. A software system has also been specifically developed to produce gameplay summaries based on feedback-based gameplay metrics, and examples of summaries (based on several games) are presented and analysed. The present thesis also demonstrates that feedback-based gameplay metrics can be conjointly analysed with other forms of data (such as biometry) in order to build a more complete picture of game play experience. Feedback based game-play metrics constitutes a post-processing approach that allows the researcher or analyst to explore the data however they wish and as many times as they wish. The method is also able to process any audio-visual file, and can therefore process material from a range of audio-visual sources.

This novel methodology brings together game studies and computer sciences by extending the range of games that can now be researched but also to provide a viable solution accounting for the exact way players experience games.

text: Feedback-Based Gameplay Metrics and Gameplay Performance Segmentation: An audio-visual approach for assessing player experience. Gameplay metrics is a method and approach that is growing in popularity amongst the game studies research community for its capacity to assess players’ engagement with game systems. Yet, little has been done, to date, to quantify players’ responses to feedback employed by games that conveys information to players, i.e., their audio-visual streams. The present thesis introduces a novel approach to player experience assessment - termed feedback-based gameplay metrics - which seeks to gather gameplay metrics from the audio-visual feedback streams presented to the player during play. So far, gameplay metrics - quantitative data about a game state and the player's interaction with the game system - are directly logged via the game's source code. The need to utilise source code restricts the range of games that researchers can analyse. By using computer science algorithms for audio-visual processing, yet to be employed for processing gameplay footage, the present thesis seeks to extract similar metrics through the audio-visual streams, thus circumventing the need for access to, whilst also proposing a method that focuses on describing the way gameplay information is broadcast to the player during play.

In order to operationalise feedback-based gameplay metrics, the present thesis introduces the concept of gameplay performance segmentation which describes how coherent segments of play can be identified and extracted from lengthy game play sessions. Moreover, in order to both contextualise the method for processing metrics and provide a conceptual framework for analysing the results of a feedback-based gameplay metric segmentation, a multi-layered architecture based on five gameplay concepts (system, game world instance, spatial-temporal, degree of freedom and interaction) is also introduced.

Finally, based on data gathered from game play sessions with participants, the present thesis discusses the validity of feedback-based gameplay metrics, gameplay performance segmentation and the multi-layered architecture. A software system has also been specifically developed to produce gameplay summaries based on feedback-based gameplay metrics, and examples of summaries (based on several games) are presented and analysed. The present thesis also demonstrates that feedback-based gameplay metrics can be conjointly analysed with other forms of data (such as biometry) in order to build a more complete picture of game play experience. Feedback based game-play metrics constitutes a post-processing approach that allows the researcher or analyst to explore the data however they wish and as many times as they wish. The method is also able to process any audio-visual file, and can therefore process material from a range of audio-visual sources.

This novel methodology brings together game studies and computer sciences by extending the range of games that can now be researched but also to provide a viable solution accounting for the exact way players experience games.

year: 2014

title: New Zealand late miocene biostratigraphy and biochronology: Studies of planktic foraminifers and bolboforms at oceanic sites 593 and 1123, and selected onland sections

authors: Crundwell, Martin P.

abstract: Using high-resolution suites of core samples, including 940 samples from Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Site 593 in southern Tasman Sea off western New Zealand, and 353 samples from Ocean Drilling Program Site 1123 in the Southwest Pacific Ocean off eastern New Zealand, this study documents for the late Miocene interval (about 11.6 to 5.2 million years ago) the nature and abundance of planktic foraminifers in these uncomplicated and virtually uninterrupted oceanic sequences. The discovery and documentation of bolboforms at both sites - an enigmatic group of marine calcareous protophytes new to New Zealand - has enabled a highly-refined and integrated planktic foraminiferal and bolboform zonation to be established with 69 well-defined biostratigraphic events - highest and lowest occurrences, acme zones, and coiling zones - that are potentially useful for the correlation and subdivision of the late Miocene in New Zealand. It has also enabled these bioevents to be correlated with the excellent paleomagnetic record at ODP Site 1123 (Wilson et al. in prep.) and age calibrated directly or indirectly with the geomagnetic polarity time scale GPTS-95 (Cande & Kent 1995). This represents a major advance in New Zealand late Miocene biostratigraphy and biochronology and it is the first time a robust late Miocene chronology has been developed entirely from local data. 
The study also links the major microfossil bioevents established in the offshore records at Sites 593 and 1123 back into selected onland New Zealand sections (730 samples), where the late Miocene is rather poorly resolved, thereby improving our ability to date, correlate, and interpret the paleoceanographic significance of late Miocene events more widely. Reassessment of faunal criteria used for the operational recognition and correlation of the late Miocene Tongaporutuan Stage in onland New Zealand, shows that the current defining faunal criterion for the base of the stage, the lowest occurrence of benthic foraminifers of the Bolivinita quadrilatera group, does not maintain a consistent position with respect to the robust biostratigraphic framework of planktic foraminiferal and bolboform events at Sites 593 and 1123. Consequently, it is proposed that the lower Tongaporutuan Stage boundary should be redefined as the base of the Kaiti Coiling Zone and (secondarily) by the highest common occurrence of Neogloboquadrina mayeri s.l. The redefinition of the Tongaporutuan Stage locates the Waiauan-Tongaporutuan Stage boundary close to the earliest New Zealand occurrences of the B. quadrilatera group. Because all of these events occur near to the base of base of Chron C5n.2n (10.95 Ma), at a stratigraphic level that is about 1.3 million years older than rocks at the base of the Tongaporutuan stratotype in North Taranaki, a new reference section is needed for the base of the stage.

text: New Zealand late miocene biostratigraphy and biochronology: Studies of planktic foraminifers and bolboforms at oceanic sites 593 and 1123, and selected onland sections Using high-resolution suites of core samples, including 940 samples from Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Site 593 in southern Tasman Sea off western New Zealand, and 353 samples from Ocean Drilling Program Site 1123 in the Southwest Pacific Ocean off eastern New Zealand, this study documents for the late Miocene interval (about 11.6 to 5.2 million years ago) the nature and abundance of planktic foraminifers in these uncomplicated and virtually uninterrupted oceanic sequences. The discovery and documentation of bolboforms at both sites - an enigmatic group of marine calcareous protophytes new to New Zealand - has enabled a highly-refined and integrated planktic foraminiferal and bolboform zonation to be established with 69 well-defined biostratigraphic events - highest and lowest occurrences, acme zones, and coiling zones - that are potentially useful for the correlation and subdivision of the late Miocene in New Zealand. It has also enabled these bioevents to be correlated with the excellent paleomagnetic record at ODP Site 1123 (Wilson et al. in prep.) and age calibrated directly or indirectly with the geomagnetic polarity time scale GPTS-95 (Cande & Kent 1995). This represents a major advance in New Zealand late Miocene biostratigraphy and biochronology and it is the first time a robust late Miocene chronology has been developed entirely from local data. 
The study also links the major microfossil bioevents established in the offshore records at Sites 593 and 1123 back into selected onland New Zealand sections (730 samples), where the late Miocene is rather poorly resolved, thereby improving our ability to date, correlate, and interpret the paleoceanographic significance of late Miocene events more widely. Reassessment of faunal criteria used for the operational recognition and correlation of the late Miocene Tongaporutuan Stage in onland New Zealand, shows that the current defining faunal criterion for the base of the stage, the lowest occurrence of benthic foraminifers of the Bolivinita quadrilatera group, does not maintain a consistent position with respect to the robust biostratigraphic framework of planktic foraminiferal and bolboform events at Sites 593 and 1123. Consequently, it is proposed that the lower Tongaporutuan Stage boundary should be redefined as the base of the Kaiti Coiling Zone and (secondarily) by the highest common occurrence of Neogloboquadrina mayeri s.l. The redefinition of the Tongaporutuan Stage locates the Waiauan-Tongaporutuan Stage boundary close to the earliest New Zealand occurrences of the B. quadrilatera group. Because all of these events occur near to the base of base of Chron C5n.2n (10.95 Ma), at a stratigraphic level that is about 1.3 million years older than rocks at the base of the Tongaporutuan stratotype in North Taranaki, a new reference section is needed for the base of the stage.

year: 2004

title: New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) model undermines Maori research

authors: Roa, Tom

subjects: Performance Based Research Funding

abstract: The Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) model was instigated in 2002 to increase “the quality of research through peer assessment and performance indicators” in New Zealand (Ministry of Education 2002: 17). It is used to allocate funding between universities, departments and researchers according to the putative quality and quantity of their research outputs over the preceding 6 years. PBRF is expected to incentivise improved research excellence and efficiency, and allow government to invest research funds where greatest returns will result. This is potentially a huge gain for Māori. However, “by changing the conditions of knowledge production, research assessment exercises may also alter the shape and direction of disciplines by diverting and channelling researchers’ intellectual attention and political engagement, influencing what they study, how they do it, and how they report and write” (Middleton 2009: 194). Indeed, universities repeatedly encourage researchers to focus on activities that will improve their PBRF rankings. We believe that an unintended consequence of PBRF is the creation of significant barriers to increasing the volume, scope and quality of environmental research for Māori.

text: New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) model undermines Maori research The Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) model was instigated in 2002 to increase “the quality of research through peer assessment and performance indicators” in New Zealand (Ministry of Education 2002: 17). It is used to allocate funding between universities, departments and researchers according to the putative quality and quantity of their research outputs over the preceding 6 years. PBRF is expected to incentivise improved research excellence and efficiency, and allow government to invest research funds where greatest returns will result. This is potentially a huge gain for Māori. However, “by changing the conditions of knowledge production, research assessment exercises may also alter the shape and direction of disciplines by diverting and channelling researchers’ intellectual attention and political engagement, influencing what they study, how they do it, and how they report and write” (Middleton 2009: 194). Indeed, universities repeatedly encourage researchers to focus on activities that will improve their PBRF rankings. We believe that an unintended consequence of PBRF is the creation of significant barriers to increasing the volume, scope and quality of environmental research for Māori.

year: 2009