ABSTRACT
People approach video games for a multitude of reasons, such as connecting with others, escaping reality, or challenging their abilities. As a consequence, video games have reached an increasingly broader audience and their consumption was even more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent studies have shown how playing video games together improved the well-being of people during period of movement restriction and how video games were an important tool for connecting with physically distant people. However, little is known about how the relationships of people with video games have changed across the years. In order to answer this question, we collected data from the Steam platform and analyzed players' opinions about multiplayer video games as stated in the respective reviews. The reviews analysis showed that players had played more and in addition their reviews had not been influenced by the difficulties of this significant moment. Their contribution, however, had been less relevant for the community when compared to the situation in the years before the pandemic. Finally, an increase in players choosing to play more casual and amusing games became evident. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
While the global COVID-19 pandemic did not catalyze widespread adoption of virtual reality (VR) technologies across all industries as some had anticipated, studies like Hall et al. from 2022 have demonstrated that public valuation of VR remains strongly in gaming, entertainment, and socializing [Hall et al., 2022]. As we look towards a future in which indoor gatherings with friends and family are safe and encouraged once again, there is an opportunity to position VR gaming as a go-to add-on to social gatherings by emphasizing ease of access for players of all levels of experience, and designing gameplay that encourages engagement rather than isolation in shared space. Fruit Golf aims to use an asymmetric multiplayer format to offer an experience that spans collaborative and competitive experiences, and allows players to seamlessly interact with VR, mobile, and physical spaces in ways that most will have never seen before. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
With the insurgence of cryptocurrency and the thriving business of mobile games, games related to cryptocurrency have gained enormous interests in recent years. This paper presents a real time online multiplayer board game, Cryptocoinopoly, which is a hybrid of the existing Cryptocoinopoly board game and Monopoly. Unity (a cross-platform game engine) has been used in the development process together with Photon Unity Networking (PUN), which is a Unity package for creating online multiplayer games. At the level, Cryptocoinopoly is represented by Remote Database, Game Server, Network, Application (Game), Local Database and Client components. Notable functions such as allowing users to play the game with multiple people and for no matter how many rounds they desire;allowing users to invest into the cryptocurrency market at any time and allowing users to trade their assets with other players have been successfully implemented. Functionality testing and debugging have been conducted under constrained conditions with limited resources due to the on-going Covid-19 situation. Despite the challenges, all functional and non-functional requirements of the prototype have been fulfilled. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Due to the pandemic limitations caused by Covid-19, people need to work at home and carry on the meetings virtually. Virtual meeting tools start popularizing and thriving. Those tools allow users to see each other through screen and camera, chat through voice and text, and share content or ideas through screen share. However, screen sharing protein models through virtual meetings is not easy due to the difficulty of viewing protein 3D (Three Dimensional) structures from a 2D (Two Dimensional) screen. Moreover, interactions upon a protein are also limited. ProMVR is a tool the author developed to tackle the issue that protein designers may find limitations working in a traditional 2D or 3D environment and they may find it hard to communicate their ideas with other designers. Since ProMVR is a VR tool, it allows users to “jump into” a virtual environment, take a close look at protein models, and have intuitive interactions. © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).