EAGER: A Cultural Analytics Framework for Identifying and Integrating Creative Patterns of User Behavior and Experience in the Scalable City Multi-User Virtual World

拟议的项目将开发一种新的跨学科方法，用于分析虚拟世界中的用户体验和设计这样的世界。该方法结合了游戏设计，计算机科学，信息可视化，新媒体艺术和媒体理论的思想。该项目将结合联合收割机两个研究工作：可扩展的城市开发的实验游戏实验室由谢尔顿布朗教授，和文化分析开发的软件研究计划由博士。可扩展的城市是一个互动的艺术品，使用自定义计算机图形软件来创建一个动态变化的3D城市环境。首先，通过图像处理程序对真实的城市的卫星图像进行处理，以生成新的高度图案化的地形。在空间分析之后，区域被“划分”为使用各种古怪的“真实的房地产开发”方案的开发区--空间填充曲线、密集网格、迷宫以及这些形式的组合。作为一件重要的艺术品，可扩展城市的设计旨在挑战3D叙事环境的现有惯例。它让用户参与到一种发现的叙事中，而不是故事情节，而是以自我反思的方式与世界互动。 文化分析是一种计算方法，用于定量分析视觉媒体中的模式和节奏，如摄影，设计，电影，动画，舞蹈和音乐创作。它是专门为视觉文化和媒体研究的人文学者开发的，以利用计算方法的力量来识别创造力的模式。使用文化分析框架，布朗和Manovich建议开发一种新的方法来分析用户？活动和视觉体验的可扩展城市的多用户版本。文化分析框架将嵌入可扩展城市生成软件。这个新的分析软件层将使虚拟世界的实时转换，以响应用户的模式？行为和视觉体验。 与此同时，通过将新的分析技术融入虚拟世界生成软件，该项目旨在推进当前关于如何创建界面和模拟的研究，这些界面和模拟分析用户的表现，并根据分析结果进行动态调整。游戏设计师，HCI研究人员，游戏和媒体学者将能够分析，可视化和解释用户体验的维度与交互式基于时间的文化文物，如视频游戏，动画界面和交互式艺术作品，这些都不是用当前的分析技术，如网络分析（连接，负载和延迟），虚拟经济的计量经济学和分析玩家游戏。

The proposed project will develop a new interdisciplinary methodology for both the analysis of user experience in virtual worlds and the design of such worlds. The methodology combines ideas from game design, computer science, information visualization, New Media Art and media theory. The project will combine two research efforts: The Scalable City developed in the Experimental Game Lab directed by Professor Sheldon Brown, and Cultural Analytics developed by the Software Studies Initiative directed by Dr. Lev Manovich. The Scalable City is an interactive artwork that uses custom computer graphics software to create a dynamically changing 3D urban environment. First, satellite imagery of real cities is manipulated through image processing routines to generate new, highly patterned terrains. After spatial analysis, areas are "zoned" for development using a variety of eccentric "real estate development" schemes - space filling curves, dense grids, mazes, and combinations of these forms. As a critical artwork, the Scalable City has been designed to challenge the existing conventions of 3D narrative environments. It engages the users in a narrative of discovery, not that of a story line, but of interacting with the world in self-reflective ways. Cultural Analytics is a computational method to quantitatively analyze patterns and rhythms in visual media such as photography, design, film, animation, choreography, and music composition. It has been developed specifically for humanities scholars of visual culture and media studies to harness the powers of computational methods to identify patterns of creativity. Using the Cultural Analytics framework, Brown and Manovich propose to develop a new methodology for the analysis of users? activities and visual experiences in a multi-user version of the Scalable City. The Cultural Analytics Framework will be embedded into the Scalable City generative software. This new analytical software layer will enable the transformation of the virtual world in real-time in response to patterns in users? behavior and visual experience. At the same time, by incorporating the new analytics techniques in virtual world generation software, the project aims to advance the current research on how to create interfaces and simulations which analyze user performance and dynamically adapt based on the results of the analysis If successful, this research is likely to have transformative effects in a number of fields. Game designers, HCI researchers, and games and media scholars will be able to analyze, visualize and interpret the dimensions of user experiences with interactive time-based cultural artifacts such as video games, animated interfaces, and interactive artworks which are not captured with current analytics techniques such as network analysis (connectivity, load, and latency), econometrics on virtual economies, and profiling player game play.