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Pervasive games are an emerging genre combining reality and computing. This article presents a suite of simple pervasive serious games we have developed to explore the concept of “reality-enhanced gaming,” a pattern to tie game play mechanics to the outcomes/measurements of real-world activities. The prototype games were realized in the context of TEAM, an industrial research project aimed at developing apps for flexible and collaborative mobility. The proposed games are examples of different user interfaces we considered useful to meet various significant scenarios, goals and user typologies, especially for improving car driving styles. Given the variety of information sources, contexts of use, and target users, we abstracted a game-oriented framework [Reality-Enhanced AppLied (REAL) games], in order to support reuse and scalability. Through a set of RESTful application programming interfaces (APIs), the REAL framework separates sensor data from actual game implementations, so as to provide different experiences to users, according to their specific needs and preferences. This concept—which allows serious game developers to focus on their specific game logic while seamlessly exploiting a variety of field sensors—is general and may be applied to a variety of domains. We validated REAL developing and field testing five typologies of serious games. Subjective evaluation results show a good level of satisfaction and perceived usefulness. More tests are needed, especially in terms of different application contexts, impact on developers, number and variety of users, and exposure time. However, outcomes confirm the significant potential of reality-enhanced game design and the importance of tools for supporting their development.

This article describes an architecture for a dialogue management system to be employed in serious games for natural language interaction with nonplayer characters. The aim of this work is to improve the learning experience by enhancing the immersiveness felt by the player. The system is implemented in a Service Oriented Architecture perspective and it exposes its functionalities through Web services. It also provides an easy to use authoring tool, which allows cultural heritage experts to define the character's knowledge without the need for learning a scripting language. We tested the system by embedding it in a simple serious game, where the user could interact with the virtual representation of a XVI century Geneoese artist, Luca Cambiaso, in order to acquire knowledge about his life and artworks. These early lab test results showed a high level of appreciation for the usability of the system and for the user engagement. Tests also showed that the system is a good didactic tool, since players demonstrated a similar level of knowledge acquisition to that achieved by reading a text.

This article describes an architecture for a dialogue management system to be employed in serious games for natural language interaction with nonplayer characters. The aim of this work is to improve the learning experience by enhancing the immersiveness felt by the player. The system is implemented in a Service Oriented Architecture perspective and it exposes its functionalities through Web services. It also provides an easy to use authoring tool, which allows cultural heritage experts to define the character's knowledge without the need for learning a scripting language. We tested the system by embedding it in a simple serious game, where the user could interact with the virtual representation of a XVI century Geneoese artist, Luca Cambiaso, in order to acquire knowledge about his life and artworks. These early lab test results showed a high level of appreciation for the usability of the system and for the user engagement. Tests also showed that the system is a good didactic tool, since players demonstrated a similar level of knowledge acquisition to that achieved by reading a text.

Serious games present a promising opportunity for learning, but the genre still lacks methodologies and tools for efficient and low-cost production, particularly for teacher and domain experts. This article gives an authoring framework that aims to provide structured support, from content design to final implementation. In particular, we have abstracted a conceptual model—the SandBox Serious Game - which relies on a generalization of task-based learning theory. The model invites players to perform cognitive tasks contextually while exploring information-rich virtual environments. We consider it particularly suited for cultural heritage entertainment applications. The model defines games that are set in realistic virtual worlds enriched with embedded educational tasks, which we have implemented as minigames. This approach simplifies the authoring work, which can easily be supported by visual authoring tools for ontology-based urban 3D modeling and implementation tasks, thus allowing an approach similar to the mind-maps concept. We propose a top-down methodology for content preparation, starting from a city-level analysis down to the single points of interest and associated tasks, which are instances of simple predefined minigame/quiz typologies. We provide examples and discuss criteria for selecting task typologies according to the authors' cognitive targets. Finally, we discuss the results of a user test, which took place in a lab, aimed at verifying the acquisition of cultural heritage knowledge in a pleasant and engaging way. Games appear particularly suited for supporting the study of images, especially of iconography. Compared to reading text, a game forces the player to focus more strongly on problems, which favors knowledge acquisition and retention. Learning complex concepts requires an investigative attitude, which can be spurred by well-designed games. Good design involves usability, graphic appeal, appropriate content, and the presence of connections which a player must discover in the content. Players should be asked to pay attention to and reason about their whole game activity - including the relationships between the game content, the brief introduction, and concluding texts. More comprehensive tests are needed to better investigate the educational effectiveness—however, the first results are promising, especially in terms of user motivation and creation of new opportunities for learning about CH.

The impending “intelligent car” scenario can have a great impact on improving the quality of life of a number of citizens by reducing wasted time and enhancing interaction with the environment. In this article, the authors describe their development of tour guides on palmtop computers that present tourists with high‐quality multimedia information and services. An important added value of tour guides on palmtop computers is that they can assist the user in the real‐time event (e.g., in a museum or while walking in a city) and during the in‐car trip as well. However, the overall surrounding environment and the contextual tasks performed by the user are different. In‐car use is challenging because it requires adapting the interaction modes of the user to the strict safety constraints of driving. The authors have explored these issues in the development of a tour guide for the Castellon region of Spain. In this article, they present ideas and discuss preliminary findings on their interface design. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 15: 461–476, 2005.

The ever more widespread diffusion of Java interfaces and animations has highlighted the performance problems of the Java graphics environment. We have analysed the bottleneck and created a set of APIs that support direct access to platform specific hardware resources for graphics acceleration. We have also re‐implemented standard APIs in order to allow transparent direct access also by programs using standard JFC. The improvement in performance of about one order of magnitude encourages the utilization of Java for realizing fluid animations on large windows. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.