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。该项目将结合两项研究成果：由Sheldon Brown教授领导的实验游戏实验室开发的可扩展城市，以及由Lev Manovich博士领导的软件研究倡议开发的文化分析。可伸缩的城市是一个交互式艺术品，使用自定义的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城市的卫星图像进行处理，生成新的、高度图案化的地形。经过空间分析，使用各种古怪的“房地产开发”方案——空间填充曲线、密集网格、迷宫和这些形式的组合——对区域进行“分区”开发。作为一种重要的艺术作品，可扩展城市的设计挑战了现有的3D叙事环境。它让用户沉浸在发现的叙述中，而不是故事情节，而是以自我反思的方式与世界互动。文化分析是一种定量分析视觉媒体模式和节奏的计算方法，如摄影、设计、电影、动画、编舞和音乐创作。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。利用文化分析框架，Brown和Manovich提出了一种新的用户分析方法。活动和视觉体验的多用户版本的可扩展城市。文化分析框架将嵌入到可扩展城市生成软件中。这个新的分析软件层将使虚拟世界能够实时响应用户的模式。行为和视觉体验。同时，通过将新的分析技术整合到虚拟世界生成软件中，该项目旨在推进当前关于如何创建界面和模拟的研究，这些界面和模拟可以分析用户性能并根据分析结果动态适应。如果成功，这项研究可能会在许多领域产生变革性影响。游戏设计师、人机交互研究人员、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，包括视频游戏、动画界面和交互式艺术品等基于时间的交互式文化产品，这些产品无法用当前的分析技术（如网络分析（连通性、负载和延迟）、虚拟经济计量经济学和玩家游戏玩法分析）捕获。

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.