Deliverable 4 - CR-PLAY · 2014. 10. 15. · CR-PLAY Project no. 661089 Deliverable 4.1 End-user Requirements Analysis 3 5 Miniclip UK Limited MC UK 6 University of Patras UPAT Greece

Deliverable 4.1 End-user Requirements Analysis

CR-PLAY “Capture-Reconstruct-Play: an innovative mixed pipeline for

videogames development”

Grant Agreement ICT-611089-CR-PLAY

Start Date 01/11/2013

End Date 31/10/2016

CR-PLAY Project no. 661089 Deliverable 4.1 End-user Requirements Analysis

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Document Information

Deliverable number: 4.1 Deliverable title: End-user Requirements Analysis Deliverable due date: 28/02/2014 Actual date of delivery: 28/02/2014 Main author(s): Christos Fidas (UPAT), Jan Storgårds (CUR), Melpomeni Masoura

(UPAT), Nikolaos Avouris (UPAT)

Main contributor(s): Ivan Orvieto (TL), George Drettakis (INRIA), Michael Goesele (TUD), Gabriel Brostow (UCL), Brian Chadwick (MC)

Version: 1.0

Versions Information Version Date Description of changes 0.1 03/02/2014 First draft of the deliverable 0.2 19/02/2014 Containing first results of the qualitative data analysis 0.3 24/02/2014 Beta version of the deliverable 0.4 25/02/2014 Version after INRIA and TL comments 0.5 26/02/2014 Pre-Final version for final check 0.6 27/02/2014 Pre-Final version for English check 0.7 27/02/2014 English language checked. Release candidate 1.0 28/02/2014 Final version to be submitted

Dissemination Level PU Public X

PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services)

RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services)

CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services)

Deliverable Nature

R Report X

P Prototype

D Demonstrator

O Other

CR-PLAY Project Information

The CR-PLAY project is funded by the European Commission, Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, under the FP7-ICT programme. The CR-PLAY Consortium consists of:

Participant Number

Participant Organisation Name Participant Short Name

Country

Coordinator

1 Testaluna S.R.L. TL Italy Other Beneficiaries

2 Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique INRIA France 3 University College London UCL UK 4 Technische Universitaet Darmstadt TUD Germany


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5 Miniclip UK Limited MC UK 6 University of Patras UPAT Greece 7 Cursor Oy CUR Finland

Summary

Capture – Reconstruct – Play (CR - PLAY) is a research project supported by the European Commission (EC) under the seventh framework program (FP7). This is the first deliverable from Work Package 4: “Design and Development (Requirements, Functional Specifications, and Prototypes)”. The leader of this work package is UPAT, with involvement from the following partners: TL, INRIA, CUR, UCL, TUD and MC. The objective of this work package is focused on gathering end-user needs, forming these into functional specifications and creating the prototypes of the mixed pipeline for videogame development. This WP sets into practice the user-centred design approach adopted by CR-PLAY, ensuring that the technologies developed will result in tools that are effective and usable for professional and semi-professional use.

This deliverable entitled “D4.1. End-User Requirements Analysis” describes the overall methodology that has been applied for elicitation, validation and documentation of end-user requirements that were posed by representative users of the CR-PLAY mixed content creation pipeline. The CR-PLAY tools are developed following a User Centred Design (UCD) cycle [ISO 9241-210]. Eight (8) video game developer companies from three (3) different countries participated in the requirements validation study with the aim to provide empirical evidence about the usefulness of the proposed CR-PLAY pipeline, tools and functionalities. The validation was performed from the following perspectives: a) the intention of adopting the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline, b) the impact of CR-PLAY on achieving the corporate business goals and its effect in internal organizational or operational structures, c) the CR-PLAY’s perceived usefulness and finally d) the perceived ease of use of the CR-PLAY tools.

Analysis of results revealed that the participants share a positive attitude towards adopting the CR-PLAY approach. They perceived the approach as very useful and innovative with the potential of solving an outstanding issue related with producing high quality game assets fast and cost effective. However, besides the positive predisposition expressed by the game developer companies, the study revealed as well concerns related to the CR-PLAY approach. The critical concerns of the participants are related to the quality of the produced representations, the degree in which the representations can be modified, the capability of controlling the quality of the produced game assets according to a certain game design. Furthermore, requirements have been identified with regards to supporting team collaboration during the capture phase. Interoperability requirements among CR-PLAY and widely used game engines and modeling tools were also stated as important. The aforementioned requirements, as expressed by typical users, are aiming to have a smooth integration of the CR-PLAY approach to game developer current processes, workflows and tools with regards to video games content creation. However, it is important to bear in mind that users often resist change and maintain a bias towards their current way of thinking and acting, in terms of methods, tools used. So in case of disruptive new technologies, like CR-PLAY, they may fail to envisage the new potential and capabilities offered, that may change dramatically the way they conduct their work.

It is important to stress that within a user centred design approach the end-user requirements document is a living document which is continuously revised and enhanced throughout the project life time according to engineering and research developments of the underlying technologies, end-user feedback and partners' refined vision of CR-PLAY.


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Table of Contents

Summary ............................................................................................................................................................ 3

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................... 4

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 5

2. Domain analysis: The video game development industry ......................................................................... 6

3. Stakeholder analysis .................................................................................................................................. 7

4. Traditional asset creation pipeline in video game development .............................................................. 8

5. CR-PLAY’s mixed video game development pipeline ................................................................................ 9

6. CR-PLAY’s end-user requirements analysis methodology ....................................................................... 10

7. Phase A: Requirements gathering ........................................................................................................... 11

7.1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................ 11

7.2 Participants ...................................................................................................................................... 11

7.3 Method ............................................................................................................................................ 11

7.4 Usage scenario description for validation with game developers .................................................. 11

8. Phase B: Requirements validation ........................................................................................................... 15

8.1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................ 15

8.2 CR-PLAY Validation goals ................................................................................................................. 15

8.3 Method ............................................................................................................................................ 16

8.4 Procedure ......................................................................................................................................... 17

8.5 Participants ...................................................................................................................................... 18

9. Phase C: Requirements analysis and documentation ............................................................................. 26

9.1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................ 26

9.2 Method ............................................................................................................................................ 26

9.3 Results .............................................................................................................................................. 27

9.4 CR-PLAY Personas ............................................................................................................................ 36

9.5 Discussion......................................................................................................................................... 39

10. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 40

References ....................................................................................................................................................... 42

Glossary ............................................................................................................................................................ 44

Annexes ............................................................................................................................................................ 46

Interview schedules ..................................................................................................................................... 46

Participants demographics .......................................................................................................................... 52


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1. Introduction

Understanding user requirements is an integral part of information systems design and is critical to its success. It is widely understood that successful systems and products design begins with an understanding of end user needs and requirements. According to the [ISO 9241-210] standard, User-Centred Design (UCD) begins with a thorough understanding of needs and requirements of the users. The benefits can include increased productivity, enhanced quality of work, reductions in support and training costs and improved user satisfaction. Requirements analysis is not a simple process as several methods and techniques need to be applied aiming to enhance the accuracy, validity, and reliability of the system requirements. Figure 1 depicts the process of gathering and validating the user needs, transforming them into system requirements and documenting them as software specifications. These specifications will be subsequently used in order to design and develop the interactive system.

Figure 1. Requirements engineering phases (from user needs to system specifications)

Traditional requirements engineering techniques [1, 2] assume that the aforementioned steps can be accomplished in a few iterations. However, within a user centered design approach several iterations are required throughout the project lifetime. In this realm, applying a user centered design approach in CR-PLAY can be considered as an iterative process from understanding the context of use, specifying requirements, designing prototypes and evaluating them aiming to verify that the requirements have been met.

This deliverable illustrates the methodology that has been applied to gather, validate, and document end-user requirements for the CR-PLAY capturing, re-constructing and playing tools. The requirements were initially gathered from several sources such as the CR-PLAY’s description of work (DoW), the background literature review and from discussions with members of the CR-PLAY consortium. Subsequently, the initial gathered requirements were used to create basic usage scenarios with the aim to present those to representative end-users who were recruited to participate in the validation phase. The scope of the validation phase was to verify the initial gathered requirements but also to identify other additional requirements. The validation phase was performed from several perspectives like the perceived usefulness of the CR-PLAY approach and the completeness of requirements with regards to the CR-PLAY tools. Eight (8) game developer companies participated in the frame of the requirements validation study. Seventeen (17) semi-structured interviews were conducted with representative CR-PLAY users in order to elicit their perceived values and difficulties in adopting the proposed CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video game development.

Each of the aforementioned phases along with the applied techniques are analysed in more detail in the relevant sections of this deliverable.

(a) (b) (c)

System

Requirements

System

Specification

User

Needs


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2. Domain analysis: The video game development industry

The video game industry is a fast moving economic sector. As reported in [3]: “video game development cycles stretched from 12 months for the previous generation causal games to up to 36 months for today’s high quality video games. In this context Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA 5) is the most expensive video game ever produced, at a development and marketing budget of $265 million. The previous record holder for the most expensive video game produced was Star Wars: The Old Republic, with a budget of $200 million. In comparison, the next video games on the list of the most expensive video games produced include Grand Theft Auto 4, Disney Infinity and Red Dead Redemption, which had a $100 million budget each”

In Table 1, the average unit game development costs have been broken into several categories [4]. “Art, design and programming accounted for nearly half of the total retail cost of a next generation video game, while the remainder went to marketing, distribution and retail mark-up. Increasingly detailed computer generated graphics and animation, much of which mirrored the special effects work normally associated with Hollywood studios, had the most impact on development costs. Programming costs, which included basic game play, artificial intelligence and online services, also increased.”

Item Cost ($) % of Total Cost

Art and design 15 25

Programming and engineering 12 20

Retail mark-up 12 20

Tools license fee 7 12

Marketing 4 7

Market development fund 3 5

Manufacturing and packaging 3 5

Third-party licensing 3 5

Publisher profit 1 2

Total retail cost 60 100

Table 1. Video game per unit costs of video game development broken in several categories [4]

In CR-PLAY we try to address the high cost of creating high quality content of video games by representing a major shift in the content creation pipeline for video games, with an important positive impact on development costs and time-to-market.


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3. Stakeholder analysis

Stakeholders include every individual, group, organization or corporate that affects or could be affected by the CR-PLAY system [5]. The CR-PLAY system has a clear vision, as stated in the description of work [p. 4]: “…the CR-PLAY’s approach will represent a major shift in the content creation pipeline for games, with an important positive impact on development costs and time-to-market. The simplicity, speed and quality of the new pipeline will have far-reaching consequences, freeing resources to achieve more creative games faster and cheaper and consequently giving a significant competitive edge to the European SMEs in the game sector”.

In Table 2 we present the main stakeholder categories and how they might be influenced by the CR-PLAY system.

Stakeholder Category Role in the video game creation pipeline CR-PLAY Anticipated Impact

Game Producer /

Game Developer

Handle all development costs set and maintain deadlines and the overall budget. Overview the progress of the video game development tasks to assure quality and timely delivered outcomes.

A significant competitive edge to the European SME’s in the game sector.

Game Designer

Game designers originate ideas for new games, determining the game mechanics, the users motivation etc.. They create a detailed design document to guide the various art and technical teams executing the game. Usually a design document specifies story, game play, settings, characters, environments etc.

More creative games can be produced within shorter time. An important positive impact on development costs and time-to-market.

Game 3D Artists Run the entire creative process, providing direction and feedback to the various teams of artists in the content creation pipeline.

A major shift in the content creation pipeline in terms of simplicity, speed and quality.

Game Publisher Handles all publishing costs (materials production, advertising, etc.) Coordinates with press, plans events at gaming conventions (etc.).

An important positive impact on time-to-market.

Player

This category represents the final users of the video game development pipeline. The players are the final “customers” the video game industry is targeting to.

Through the proposed approach more creative and highly qualitative video games will be available for game players faster and cheaper.

Table 2. CR-PLAY impact on various stakeholders

The primary users (technical specialists group mainly artists and programmers) represent the main user category and the CR-PLAY tools are built foremost for them. The primary users are mainly the ones who directly interact with the CR-PLAY tools (i.e. capturing, reconstruction and editing tools). However, there are also secondary users (the art directors, game designers or game producers, publishers) who evaluate the produced outcome and provide initial and iterative directions with regards to the real world scenes that need to be captured and perform an overall quality control of the produced results.


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4. Traditional asset creation pipeline in video game development

Figure 2 depicts the game development process as three consecutive efforts [6, 7]. The left hand side of the diagram depicts the pre-production phase, resulting in a Game Design Document (GDD). The game design document is created by the development team as result of collaboration between the designers, artists and programmers and acts as a reference which is used and refined iteratively throughout the game development process. Once the first usable version of GDD is created, the production phase can start (central part of Figure 2), typically taking most of the duration of the development of a game. Among this phase, the traditional asset creation pipeline, that will be modified introducing the CR-PLAY approach, is briefly described hereby.

Figure 2. Video game development pipeline

Roles and procedures in the video game asset creation pipeline

The video game development is a complex and collaborative process. A detailed review of this process is out of the scope of this deliverable. However, for an in depth understanding of the video game development pipeline, human roles and available tools a plethora of on-line resources, books and scientific articles are available [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15],[16].

Figure 3 depicts the main human roles and summarizes associates workflows in the video game asset creation pipeline:

(a) The game designer in collaboration with others (i.e. the game producer, the art director etc.) envisions the entire game and creates a detailed design document.

(b) The concept artist is usually prototyping according to the game design document various characters, environments and objects.

(c) The modeller responsibility is to take a two dimensional piece of concept art and translate it into a 3D model that can be given to animators. There are a variety of 3D modellers depending on the specific role: environmental, character or objects modellers.

(d) The technical engineers ensure that the game assets are easily integrated into the game engine and are behaving as stated in the GDD. They are also responsible for balancing the quality according to technical limits of the chosen platform (e.g. depending on the platform mobile or web the technical engineers decide about high or low rendering etc.). The technical team tasks include among others to implement the game mechanics and to proceed with texturing and lighting tasks etc.

Concept

Development

Design

Pre - Production

Implementation

Production Post - Production

Test Deployment

& Support

Producer, Publisher,

Game Designers, Programmers etc.

.

Art and Technical Directors, Programmers, 3D Artists,

Modelers etc..

Testers Beta-testers Evaluators

Sales Marketing

CR-PLAY


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(e) – (f) Several iterations among the art director and aforementioned team members are important in order to assure high quality results.

Figure 3. Video game content development pipeline

5. CR-PLAY’s mixed video game development pipeline

In CR-PLAY we propose an innovative mixed pipeline for video game development which will drastically reduce both time and expenses involved in the creation of assets, and make high quality realistic contents accessible even to small game developers. Game developers will be able to capture and reconstruct indoor or outdoor objects or real life elements (e.g. moving trees) by simply taking a few sequences of photos and videos to be processed by the semi-automatic software created in the project and integrated with traditional assets made of polygons and textures.

It is anticipated that the new approach will significantly affect the content creation pipeline in video game development with new tools and technologies which will allow a much faster turnaround time from the idea to the prototype implementation of video games. The CR-PLAY pipeline is comprised of the following major steps as depicted in Figure 4: a) the capturing step, b) the reconstruction and finally c) the play (display) step. The aforementioned steps will be achieved by software tools, libraries and plug-ins that will be developed within the CR-PLAY project

Figure 4. CR-PLAY major steps in the proposed mixed pipeline

Figure 5 depicts the CR-PLAY approach in several levels of abstractions with regards to system functionalities (system layer), available tools (tool layer) targeting to a specific user category with well defined user goals (user layer) to the actual offered value of the CR-PLAY approach (business layer).

Art Director

Concept Artist

3D Artists/ Animators,

Level Designers

Technical Engineers

Video Game Content Creation Pipeline Implementation

(a)

(b) (c) (d)

(f) (e)

GDD

Game Designer

Pre-Production Production

CAPTURE RECONSTRUCT PLAY

(DISPLAY)

(a) (b) (c)


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Figure 5. Business, user, tool and system layer in the CR-PLAY video game development pipeline

6. CR-PLAY’s end-user requirements analysis methodology

CR-PLAY project adopts a user-centered iterative design cycle. The applied methodology was based on three phases (Figure 6). Phase (a) had the aim to elicit the CR-PLAY vision along with end-user requirements from CR-PLAY technological partners. Phase (b) requirements validation verified this view against the perceptions and opinions of real game developers. Phase (c) analyzed findings of the previous step, consolidated results with partners and finally documented the final end-user requirements.

Figure 6. CR-PLAY overall requirements engineering methodology

PHASE (A):

ELICITATION

PHASE (B):

VALIDATION

Validate user requirements

with representative users

(e.g. game developers)

PHASE (C):

ANALYSIS &

DOCUMENTATION

Deliverable D4.1

(End-user

Requirements Analysis)

Elicit user requirements &

context of use

M4Timeline M2 M3

CR-PLAY: System Layer

CR-PLAY: Tool Layer

Capturing tool

Reconstruction tool

Captured image - and video-based

data and metadata

Play (Display)

tool

IBR / VBR Plug-ins

Video Game Artists Layer

Goal: Capture a scene structure (e.g. indoor / outdoor, single object / complete street etc.)

Goal: Live Reconstruction of the captured data on near workstation, visualization of the resolution

Goal: Play (display) the reconstructed data in game development engines

Reconstructed Image - and video-

based 3D data

IBR / VBR

Reconstruction libraries Guidance

algorithms

CR-PLAY rendering extension algorithms

Planning

Algorithms Post-

Processing

Real time-feedback

Game Development Environment

Business Layer

Goal:

Decrease development costs of content creation and time to market with new workflows

SYSTEM LAYER

TOOL LAYER

USER LAYER

BUSINESS LAYER

Goal:

To follow cost effective approaches to create more creative games faster and

cheaper.


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7. Phase A: Requirements gathering

7.1 Scope

The scope of the requirement gathering phase has been to elicit a detailed scenario description from technology partners. The scenario description derived from the description of work (DoW), technical presentations of consortium members [17] and available literature review [18]. Simultaneously, personas were created as a practical approach to better understand the stakeholders' intentions and goals when using the CR-PLAY tools.

7.2 Participants

The participants in the requirement gathering phase were members of the CR-PLAY consortium. In particular partners associated with the developing of representative tools of the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline where more actively engaged (e.g. TUD for the capturing tool, INRIA for the reconstruction tool, TESTALUNA for the play functionality etc).

7.3 Method

Scenarios are widely used in requirements elicitation and are narrative and specific descriptions of current and future processes including actions and interactions between the users and the system [19, 20]. Scenarios are useful because they force us to think about how actual people will really use the CR-PLAY tools in the mixed video games pipeline we are developing. At the scenario-writing stage, it's more important to focus on what the experience will actually be like from the point of view of the people in the scenario, rather than trying to pin down technical details of how the system will work. Scenarios can be better understood when they are combined with personas [21, 22, 23]. Three personas were initially created in the requirements gathering phase and were continuously refined throughout the requirements engineering process by taking into consideration results of the semi-structured interviews with representative stakeholders. The final elaborated personas are presented in the analysis section.

7.4 Usage scenario description for validation with game developers

This section presents the elaborated CR-PLAY usage scenario. The scenario was derived from the description of work (page 15) and has been enriched by including for each step in the proposed CR-PLAY pipeline: a) the prerequisites (what has happened prior to this particular scenario), b) user categories (who is involved), c) activities (which tool and which functionalities are offered to the end-user) and finally c) the results (what is the ending-state of the scenario).

Use Case Scenario: The “Pitch”

“JapoTek is a well-known game development team, specialized in casual games played in web browsers. They have great titles in their portfolio, created with standard 3D middleware. During the last two years, free-to-play casual games for browsers have gained more and more attention from the mass audience, and related development sector is now one of the healthiest within the videogame market. As a direct consequence, the quality of titles has started increasing in terms of gameplay experience, quality of graphics, number of characters and environments etc. Most of JapoTek’s competitors have made important investments in this direction, thus now a technological change is required to keep their titles on the cutting edge. JapoTek is mainly famous for its successful title “Downtown Skate”, a 3-year old game which has been played by millions of players worldwide.


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The team principals have decided to create the sequel and to call it “Downtown Skate HD”. Target platforms are both web browsers but also high end mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). The challenge is now to adopt a new technology to obtain high quality graphics, many environments and characters and to deploy the game on different platforms, but to keep costs under control. Some solutions are already available on the market, but all of them require a strong effort of 3D artists to create the graphics assets for environments, objects and characters. Paolo, JapoTek’s lead 3D artist, has followed the news on the web site of CR-PLAY, an EU funded R&D project, for some months, and he is now interested in checking if technologies and tools created in the project could be used to find a solution to company’s problems *Figure 7].

Figure 7. An example of a skateboard-themed casual game (“Colacao Skate Freestyle” developed by Testaluna)

Paolo wants to make use of a mixed pipeline for content creation to create a prototype of the game set in his hometown. He urges the team’s programmers and game designers to familiarize themselves with the tools and technologies developed within CR-PLAY. The production of the game prototype is organized so as to re-use animations, tricks and features of the game together with photorealistic environments and objects captured and displayed within the mixed pipeline. In particular there is great interest in having high quality environments and animated elements (fountains, moving trees, flags, moving cars etc.), captured from the real world and mixed with characters already created with a traditional approach. Another important feature for the game is the possibility to represent different moments of the day thanks to the dynamic lighting model supported by CR-PLAY system.” Paolo has several goals when using the CR-PLAY system: Goal (a): Capture image or video based content

Pre-requisites: Paolo is using the CR-PLAY capturing tool on his new Smartphone device (iPhone 5). He downloaded the app from the apple store. The mobile device has a high resolution camera and contains gyroscopes and inertial sensors which help estimate small camera-phone pose changes. To capturing details of surface normals especially for single objects (which is a very demanding task) he knows that a specialized setup is required (e.g. the mobile camera would sit in a lightweight cradle and it would capture image sequences while triggering LED lights, attached to the four sides of the cradle, i.e. above, below, left, and right of the camera).

Activity - Initializing: Paolo activates the capture tool. The tool provides Paolo with several functionalities. Paolo gives some basic information about the scene structure (e.g. indoor / outdoor, single object / complete street) the system will decide how many images are needed, and it will provide guidance on the positions they have to be taken from. Furthermore, the capture tool allows user-based annotations and extends them to the complete scene for a better segmentation/separation of objects.

Activity - Capture: The system will decide automatically if enough data has been captured or will guide the user towards new camera positions that support a more complete reconstruction. The user is


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then guided towards the new view, and the image is captured automatically at the right position. In order to actually capture a computed view, the user needs to move the device into the correct position. The feature matching and pose estimation of the next best view (NBV) is done constantly in about 1 second but the global optimization gets more expensive when the number of images and 3D points increases.

Activity - Guidance: The capture tool uses the phone display to provide guiding to Paolo in two ways: First, it presents an estimate of how the new image has to look like, in order to give a global impression of the camera position and viewing angle. Second, it shows an approximation of the direction towards the exact 3D position. Visual aids will be provided, such as arrows guiding the user to the NBV (Figure 8).

Figure 8. CR-PLAY Capture guidance. Source [18]

Activity - Iterations: The next iteration starts after the internal reconstruction has been updated. The capture application registers all captured images, creates a sparse reconstruction, and uses this data to estimate new views and to guide the capture process.

Activity - Post processing: Paolo has finished capture the desired scene. For the quality of a final reconstruction it can also be important to exclude captured data if it introduces too much uncertainty. As a consequence Paolo is using on a nearby workstation a system that post-processes data and removes unnecessary or outlier data before a complex reconstruction. It can also be important to separate a dataset into several smaller parts. In fact this activity develops confidence measures as a post processing step, and improved reconstruction, which, in contrast to previous techniques will concentrate on providing the 3D information useful for IBR and VBR, rather than an accurate-as-possible geometric model.

Results: Paolo has finished the post-processing step. He can now proceed with the following actions aiming to manage captured indoor or outdoor scenes. The available options are: a) Review which provides him a real time feedback about the captured scenes, he actually can move to different viewpoints of the captured scene, b) Delete one or all images/videos takes in this activity, c) Save the capture activity, d) Share/Send to other members in the content creation pipeline, e) Edit and finally f) export as external files. The export functionality allows Paolo to move the captured content to the reconstruction stage.

Goal (b): Reconstruct (Live reconstruction on nearby workstation and visualization of the resolution)

Pre-requisites: Paolo has finished the capture activity of a scene and he has exported in a pre-defined IBR/VBR format the following data: a) multiple photos of a scene, b) calibrated cameras for each photo (i.e. the position and orientation of each photo), c) 3D point cloud with normals (usually sparse and often inaccurate), d) a mesh, usually approximate, can contain holes and inaccuracies. Other data may also be included. All this information is saved in an IBR/VBR format aiming to be integrated to the reconstruction tool.

4.

5

1.

3 captur

ed


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Activity - Import files: Paolo uses the reconstruction tool to import the captured data. It is a stand alone application that is used for reconstructing the captured scene. As seen in the figure below tools provide a coarse (sometimes inaccurate) 3D version “point cloud” or mesh.

Figure 9. Capture tools provide a coarse (sometimes inaccurate) 3D version “point cloud” or mesh. Source [17]

Activity - Specifying preferred resolution: Through the reconstruction tool offered functionalities the user can choose among high or low resolution representation of the captured scene, Depending on the produced quality the end-user can decide whether the capture step has been accomplished successfully or whether he needs to re-engage in the capture activity.

Results: The output of the reconstruction tool is 3D information (point cloud, normals, mesh), which can be incomplete and inaccurate as they are comprised from a collection of images/videos taken from known camera viewpoints. Paolo uses his laptop aiming to review – evaluate the produced outcome and eventually start over with the capture process or re-capture certain view positions. This will be done by viewing the result with the renderer / play stage. The additional cost to see the result with IBR is minimal. The functionalities provided by the PLAY tool allow Paolo to navigate through the produced model aiming to examine continuity and diverse points of view with regards to the produced 3D model of the captured backdrop. Given that Paolo has the game design in mind he can evaluate whether the produced results are appropriate

Figure 10. Low and high resolution reconstructed 3D model of a captured scene Source [17]

Goal (c): Play (Display)

Pre-requisites: The reconstruction step has finished and now it is the time that the resulting IBR/VBR representations are displayed in a game engine environment (e.g. Unity 3D).

Activity - Display the 3D model: The captured and reconstructed environment is displayed through an IBR/VBR format for display within the game engine.

Activity - Play: The usability dimension in this approach relies on the fact that Paolo can use, as he did, all the available functionalities of his favorite game engine in a unified manner with regards the virtual and real world captured objects. Among others the CR-PLAY editing tools which will be embedded within a standard game engine will support dynamic lighting / delighting modeling, will


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allow high quality rendering of the imported assets, high-quality real-time in-painting (allowing users to move around more freely in captured environments, even when part of the output image includes regions not seen in the input photographs) and will allow class-specific surface synthesis. With regards to imported 3D video based data, artists will be able to encode, as a view-dependent Video Sprite, effects such as sand or snow being kicked up with foot-falls, or dirt being sprayed by spinning wheels. During play, the data will be rendered to match the environment and new viewing angle, and when the action calls for it. Here, the game designers will be able to specify which of the recorded dust-clouds is triggered by a big vs. a little impact.

Activity - Rendering: Through the CR-PLAY IBR / VBR plug-ins the rendering contains many photo-realistic features such as shading, texture, reflection, shadowing, motion blur, transparency and depth of field -- depending on the type of capture – creating a lifelike perception.

Results: Paolo can use the photorealistic environments and objects captured together with characters and assets already created with a traditional approach. The game engine handles both types of content in a unified manner therefore Paolo can continue to develop the game mechanics of the game etc.

8. Phase B: Requirements validation

8.1 Scope

The overall scope of this phase was to validate the proposed CR-PLAY pipeline, tools and functionalities with representative video game developer companies. In this section we present the validation goals, the game developer profiles that participated in the requirements validation study along with the semi-structured interview scripts.

8.2 CR-PLAY Validation goals

As depicted in Figure 11 the overall requirement validation process was performed on the following perspectives: the adoption of such tools, the completeness of requirements with regards to the CR-PLAY tools, and the impact of CR-PLAY in business objectives. Semi-structured interviews were applied in order to determine the perceived values and difficulties on creating intentions, actual using the system and measuring the CR-PLAY impact in current processes and workflows with regards to video games content creation. The overall process validated:

the intention of adopting the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video game development with an emphasis on validating the usefulness in current and future projects,

the completeness of gathered end – user requirements with respect to CR-PLAY’s functional and non-functional requirements,

the impact on achieving the corporates business goals and the possible effect of CR-PLAY in internal organizational or operational structures.


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PERCEIVED EASE OF USE OF THE CR-PLAY

MIXED CONTENT CREATION PIPELINE

REQUIREMENTS COMPLETNESS OF

CR-PLAY TOOLS

PERCEIVED USEFULNESS OF

THE CR-PLAY MIXED CONTENT

CREATION PIPELINE

IMPACT ON

BUSINESS

OBJECTIVES

Stakeholders indirectly affected

by CR-PLAY outcome (e.g.

Game Developer/Producer)

Stakeholders directly affected by

CR-PLAY outcome (e.g. Game

Designer, Art Director,3D Artist

etc.)

Figure 11. CR-PLAY Validation Axes

8.3 Method

As shown in Figure 12, the detailed method followed in the requirements validation phase was split into three sub-phases: first, to capture the game developers’ current content creation pipeline, workflows and procedures in the video game content creation pipeline, second to present the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline to game developers and finally to validate in form of semi-structured interviewees with typical end-users the proposed CR-PLAY mixed pipeline.

Figure 12. Requirements validation procedure

Phase 1 Pre-Study Game

Developer Profiling

Phase 2 Introducing CR-

PLAY

Aim

Capture the game developers’ current content creation pipeline, workflows and procedures in the video game content creation pipeline.

Present to the various user groups the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline along with tools and functionalities, modeled workflows, dependencies as identified in Phase A.

Phase 3 Validation

Impact on Business Objectives, Completeness of Requirements, Perceived usefulness and

easy of use

Validate requirements with participants and elicitate new requirements on the proposed mixed pipeline and the related functionalities with regards to the CR-PLAY tools.


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8.4 Procedure The semi-structured interviews (Annex-Interview Schedules) were conducted by UPAT and CUR during January and February 2014 in an in situ, 15 interviews, and remote context 3 interviews (Figure 13). In overall 17 persons, 3 female, 14 male, aged 23-49 with a mean age of 33, took part in the requirements validation study. Participants were recruited (in collaboration with the partners of the CR-PLAY project) from 8 different video game developer companies located in 3 different countries: a) Italy, b) Finland and c) Greece and were representative users of the CR-PLAY tools (please see as well the Stakeholder Analysis section of this deliverable). Participants shared different roles within the video game content creation pipeline and stated that they were experienced professionals in their fields of experience.

Figure 13. Requirements validation procedure (left CR-PLAY presentation, right remote interview)

The participants followed the CR-PLAY presentation [17] prior the conducted interviews. Furthermore, the interview structures with the representative scenario were sent to the interviewees before the interview appointments. In each requirement validation session conducted, audio was recorded (with the consent of the participants) and took on average 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours. Participants were asked to express their thoughts and were encouraged to be as precise as possible and were asked not to hesitate to provide positive or negative feedback on the themes of discussion. In Table 3 we summarize the participants according to their role in the video game development pipeline and provide average information with regards to their professional experience and age. Detailed information of the participants can be found in the Annex section.

ROLE TOTAL NUM AVERAGE YEARS of PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE/

AVERAGE -AGE

Producer 2 14 37

Game Designer 6 4,4 31,1

3D Artist 5 6,4 28,6

Game Programmer 4 9,7 40

Table 3. CR-PLAY Requirements validation - Participants information

It is necessary to mention that research with regards to theme saturation and number of participants, has proven that 15 users are usually enough to provide a solid ground for analysis [24, 25]. Furthermore, similar research attempts [26, 27] suggest that the number of participants can even be smaller in cases in which the participants are experts in the chosen topic. Usually more data and interviews do not necessarily lead to more information.


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8.5 Participants

Participant 1: TESTALUNA

The company

TESTALUNA is a video game designer and development company based in Milano and Genova, Italy. It mainly develops entertainment videogames for mobile platforms and browsers but it also designs and develops simulations, virtual communities combining entertainment with training, educational, therapeutic or promotional purposes. More than 350 game titles have been developed by Testaluna, including among others the game Rail Rush, with more than 40 million downloads (at. Oct.'13) (see inset).

The company was founded in 2004 by a team of professionals with previous experience of over ten years in videogame and cross-media productions. The production team is made by around 20 full time employees and some external collaborators, experienced in game design, engine creation, visualization and script programming, 3D modeling and animation, illustration, text/audio/video

editing. 70% of turnover comes from web casual games, which are sold with exclusive license to most important international free games portals, such as www.miniclip.com (U.K.), and others.

The working environment

The work environment of Testaluna is friendly and relaxed. The game designers and game developers spend most of their day in an open space with around 25 workstations, each with two monitors (Figure 14). Sometimes designers work in groups. The video game culture is central in the organization. The common room has a graffiti inspired by a video game and the announcement boards, magazines etc., are related to video games. The average age of employees is 25, mostly male. They are themselves passionate game players.

Figure 14. TESTALUNA working room

The typical setup of the working environment of a TestaLuna developer is as shown in Figure 15.


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Figure 15. A typical working environment at TESTALUNA

The tasks

The game development in Testaluna has been streamlined, so that new games can be created rapidly. The game idea is usually created within the company. Most games are highly interactive action games. For instance the Rail Rush is a simple action game of the player running on a wagon down a steep rail line and having to avoid obstacles of increasing complexity.

Creation of assets and their integration into the game follows a pipeline that can be summarized as follows:

3D and 2D artists, following indications given by Game Designers, create the assets, like background scene, objects, characters, etc

They are then introduced in the game editor middleware, receiving extra information and behaviors

Programmers implement the game rules and behaviors of the assets during game play development.

Iterative cycles of experimentation with newly introduced assets take place in the development environment.

A senior programmer and technical lead of R&D projects demonstrated one of the tools (Unity3D) that is used for Game development by the TESTALUNA, focusing on the 3D assets development and game integration. In Testaluna the current practice involves modelling assets by using the either Autodesk Maya or 3D Studio Max editors. There the basic geometry of assets is defined, as well as texture/UV mapping and animations. Textures are created with 2D editors (typically Adobe Photoshop). Assignment of extra features, as well as creation of specific shaders, is done within Unity3D. A 3D artist demonstrated the transition of an asset from Maya to Unity3D. The format used is FBX, supported by both tools. In other occasions 3D Studio Max has been used instead of Maya. The senior programmer of TESTALUNA demonstrated typical scripts of objects in Unity3D. The scripting language used is C#. The environment of Unity3D communicates with the script, so that the programmer can change some parameters and see immediately the behaviour. The Physics Engine of Unity3D takes care of some of the behaviours as well.

The tools used: Unity3D

A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. The leading game engines, like Unity3D, as defined by Wikipedia: “provide a software framework that developers use to create games for video game consoles, mobile devices and personal computers. The core functionality


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typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, and a scene graph, which is a collection of nodes in a graph or tree structure that may have many children but often only a single parent, with the effect of a parent applied to all its child nodes; an operation performed on a group automatically propagates its effect to all of its members. The process of game development is often economized, in large part, by reusing/adapting the same game engine to create different games, or to make it easier to "port" games to multiple platforms.” Testaluna uses personal computers (web browser platform) and mobile devices, iOS, Android and Windows phone 8 as its main development platforms. They usually start from the iOS and browser versions and later on release the Android and Windows phone 8 ones.

Unity3D is a cross-platform game engine with a built-in game development environment. It has been developed by Unity3D Technologies. It is used to develop video games for web plug-in, desktop platforms, consoles and mobile devices. It currently supports development for iOS, Android, Windows, etc.. Two versions of the game engine are available, Unity3D and Unity3D Pro. Testaluna have licenses for both.

It is worth noting that Unity3D has an integrated preview module that allows developer in the same environment modify parts of the game and see immediately the effect of the modifications.

Initial Discussion with Game Developers

The 3D artist demonstrated the environment as it worked on assets. The scene he was working on was a city environment made up of high office buildings. The buildings were all very repetitive, e.g. the windows were taken from few exemplars. They were not rendered in great detail, as this was an action game, in which the main character was constantly moving and never went too close to the buildings. He was asked if he needed to build any more detailed and realistic representations, however he said that for this kind of games this is not considered as a great benefit compared to the costs involved. At the same time artists in Testaluna seemed very impressed by the quality shown in Image based rendering videos, so the main advantage of the CR-PLAY approach, which is to be able to introduce image-based rendering possibilities, through which to introduce realistic scenes in the artificial environment became immediately clear both to artists and game designers. Further discussion is needed with game concept designers to investigate the value of new genres of games in which mixing of realistic and fantasy worlds could create better user experiences. When asked to identify the most difficult assets he has worked on, he replied that characters and very complicated buildings are the most difficult. There was a discussion on special effects and whether they would need more realistic special effects. In this kind of action game there are many effects needed, like explosions, fires, smoke, etc. They currently use a particle system that create effects with limited degree of realism, however they are particularly easy to implement. The alternative to be examined is the tradeoff between new types of realistic effects based on video-based rendering and the overhead introduced by this new approach, compared to the result on quality of the final effect.

Participant 2: SOFAR

The company

SoFar.gr was established in 2005 in the island of Zakynthos (Greece). Since then it has been involved in a variety of innovative IT projects in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Web and Native application development. In some of these projects the company has partnered with academic institutions, such as


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the School of Environment Engineering and Ecology of Zakynthos.


The working environment of SoFar is an inspiring environment with a great ambience for creating innovative applications. The work space offers eight working stations and a variety of devices for testing. It also includes a small lab for testing custom digital devices. Another important aspect of SoFar is that is established in the beautiful island of Zakynthos offering a fabulous context for young programmers to let their fantasy loose in order to bring new ideas in their line of work.

The tasks

SoFar is mainly involved in the production of innovative software, mainly in the field of Artificial Intelligence and web based applications. In the last two years SoFar has invested in producing mobile applications in the field of Tourism. Greece owns one of the biggest industries of tourism in the E.U. The vision of SoFar is that new technologies of augmented reality can merge Cyber Tourism with the real world tourist experience. As a proof of concept the company has developed the “TimeMachine” application which has been applied on the context of Zakynthos.

The Time Machine Project Zakynthos (Greece) used to be a town with rich Venetian architecture. Unfortunately in 1953 a catastrophic earthquake totally demolished the town. The modern day Zakynthos town has a newly rebuilt town center with a contemporary architectural style which is mostly set on the same town plan as the old, destroyed town. Today the “time machine” mobile application aims to offer an experience where the user will be able to see and explore the old town of Zakynthos as it was before the earthquake of 1953.

A team of architects reconstructed a virtual model of the old town using a variety of sources: old pictures, per-catastrophe town plans, engravings and other sources. The resulting interaction provides the user with the experience of looking through a time window whenever she looks through the mobile device. The virtual world brings back the lost town while the real world augments the virtual world by adding the sense of space and natural environment awareness. In order to increase the sense of awareness of the virtual world, 3D sounds were added creating a sound space inspired of everyday sounds of a 19th century town.

The “time machine” project offers a set of tools where easily new 3D assets can be added in the virtual world. The “time machine” application aims to be used as a means: a) for travel guiding in the architectural history of Zakynthos and b) for educational and recreation games. The “time machine” project offers a set of tools where easily new 3D assets can be added on the virtual world (thanks to Unity3D technology).

The most costly part of the development is the creation of the 3D model world This process follows the standard 3D content creation steps, with the consequent costs described previously and in the DoW. The final platform used in Unity3D.

Initial Discussion with Game Developers

The “Time Machine” is a proof of concept tested in the context of Zakynthos. The initial field trials had a major success. The vision of SoFar is to produce a set of tools and a framework (“Villusion” framework) where easily historical monuments and areas of Greece will be easily recreated as a virtual world that will be “masking” the real world. The virtual world will act as an augmented reality application that will offer to the user a unique guiding and gaming experience that will take place on the real world. At the moment the recreation of 3D models is time consuming and cost effective. Also the recreation of 3D terrains is a


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difficult task especially when you need to have an exact map on the real world. SoFar believes that using the CR-PLAY approach will be able to reduce the cost of 3D modeling and also increase the quality of the 3D models. CR-PLAY imported models of ancient ruins can be a great base for recreating accurately the damaged ancient monuments. Another very important aspect of CR-PLAY is that will provide a framework for importing big areas of 3D models making possible the creation of more realistic terrains. This is very crucial for implementing augmented reality applications since a realistic terrain will be able to increase user’s sense of awareness.

Participant 3:

The company

Nitro Games Ltd. is a Finnish game developer that produces high quality video games for worldwide distribution. Since being founded in 2007 the company has grown rapidly and become one of the largest game development studios in Finland. Since its founding 2007 the company has grown rapidly and become one of the most streamlined studios in Finland, currently employing around 20 people. The company office is located in Kotka Finland. The company focuses on core gaming with the

ability to develop on all major platforms: PC, Xbox360, PS3 & mobile devices.


The company office is located in the center of the city of Kotka. The office itself consists of several working spaces, recreational space and a coffee room. The interior is well thought and decorated to resemble the atmosphere and themes from the games that the company has developed. The working stations are located in open space so that communication between team members is easy and efficient. Each team member has an access to a powerful computer with multiple displays. There is also a wide variety of different kinds of testing equipment from console development kits to mobile phones and tablets to cover the needs for in-house testing processes.

Participant 4:

The company

Blackland Games is a start-up game studio founded in July 2013 and employs the 3 founders. The company´s office is located in the city of Kouvola (Finland). Blackland Games develops games for mobile platforms and also does some contract work for other developers. At the moment the team is working on their first iOS title Planetary Guard: Defender. Founders have a wide field of expertise and experience in the

games industry and each member of the team has their own specific roles and responsibilities.


The company aims to keep their working atmosphere as open and relaxed even though the office itself is quite small. The layout of the working stations have been placed close to each others without obstacles so


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the team can freely communicate and present their work and ideas to the other team members. This arrangement provides the small team the best environment to share information and work together.

The tasks

Current asset production workflow at Blackland Games can be described like this: When a specific graphic asset is needed the designer decides between two workflows. For simple assets only a quick sketching is used and passed to the artist who does the modelling and texturing of the asset including digital painting of the texture. For more complex or important assets they use a more detailed sketching & concepting phase. Due to the small team size they can effectively present the nearly finalized model to the whole team to approve its addition to the engine. After getting it approved by the team the asset is then finalized and animated if needed and added to the game engine. Then the artist creates the needed hierarchy and adds the needed scripts to the asset. The functionality of the added asset is then produced by the programmer and designer adds in the necessary values to balance the function of the object, if needed.

Participant 5:

The company

Kyamk GameLab is a learning environment for students whose passion is making games. The focus of their studies is on game programming and game testing and they offer a modern set of tools for developing games. Project work has a key role in their studies and they work in close cooperation with the Finnish game industry.

Each year about 30 students enroll in Game Programming specialization, which is offered within the IT degree programme. Staff and students work together - and have fun - making and testing new games.

Even though they focus on game programming the students gain such a skill set which enables them to work in a variety of programming tasks also in different application areas other than gaming. Learning by doing is essential in their study programme. The students take part in various business oriented and indie projects during their studies.


GameLab is located in Kotka (Finland) and the working environment provides modern equipment for game programming in different platforms - the same tools (like Unity3D) that are used by the game companies themselves. GameLab provides the possibility to develop games for all mobile platforms, game consoles, PC and for web.

GameLab functions as a learning environment for Kyamk´s game programming studies which is a part of the IT degree programme. Kyamk provides a wide field of studies on game programming (90 + 45 points) and the education gives to the graduates a degree in engineering (240 points). The main focus in the studies is game programming in practice using different programming languages and modern development tools.

There is a notable number of game companies in the Kotka region; GameLab actively cooperates with these companies. The cooperation provides the possibility for the students to take part in game projects with the companies. The students can get hands-on experience of working in the industry while doing internship periods in the companies. GameLab also provides game testing services.


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Participant 6:

The company

Skyrock Games Ltd is privately held game development studio producing high quality mobile and console games for digital downloadable markets. The company was founded in the beginning of 2011 and it’s located in the City of Kotka in South-Eastern coast of Finland. The talented development team has between them decades worth of industry experience and they have been working previously with several big titles in many major Finnish game studios.

The company first game was released for iOS platform in June 2013 published by Chillingo. The game pays tribute to the classic "hack and slash" genre with stunning 3D graphics and it received great reviews in the media.

The company’s next title will be a Scottish themed multiplayer siege battle/skirmish game for PC and consoles.


The company office is located in the center of city Kotka in an ICT hub office building called Datariina. Datariina provides high quality office space and also other game companies are located there so the place provides a good environment for the companies do cooperation. Like most game companies in Finland, Skyrock uses an open space layout in its office. According to the company this strengthens the communication between the team members and provides more relaxed and inspiring working environment. Each employee is provided with their own high-class workstation for concept sketching using drawing pad etc. All the desks are located in a big single room and are arranged in a way that programmers, artists, management etc. are all grouped up.

The tasks

The typical graphics production pipeline the company uses includes the art director designing and planning the general appearance and atmosphere for the production in cooperation with the designer and team. Art director then sketches and uses the internet to gather reference for the needed assets for the team and discusses with the team about the goals of what is needed. The art director passes the tasks to the concept artist to make more in-depth sketches and 2D artwork for the 3D modellers and texture artists and level design team. The concept artist also takes part in texture production. 3D modellers create the assets, unwrap them for texturing and produce the texture maps (the concept artist might take part in this step as well). The assets that need animations are then passed to the animators who add the bone-structure and weight mapping needed to the assets. The art director works closely with the team and inspects the produced assets at several stages of the production. The completed and approved assets are then saved into the Confluence system and passed to the level design/engine team to be added into the game engine. The modellers, animators and level designers/engine team then divide the necessary work that needs to be done on the engine to make the assets usable in the game.


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Participant 7:

The company

The game studio Headnought was created during the summer of 2013. Headnought is based in Lappeenranta, a remote Finnish city. Headnought is comprised of six people; four engineers and two artists. The company is currently working on

their first game which will be a side-scroller physics based puzzle game called The Woodchopper.

The tasks

First stage in all asset and feature production is making a pre-visualization sketch and concept design. This includes for example levels, characters and common assets. The team then discusses and decides which concepts will be accepted and developed further. After this the assets are produced and finalized and added to the Unity3D game engine. All the game levels are made in Unity3D engine, graphic assets with Autodesk 3DSMAX and Adobe Photoshop and animations with Esoteric Software Spine. The whole team takes part in the design process of new assets. The concept artist will make the sketches. For example when making a new character model the concept is then passed to the artist who completes the character model. After this the character model is passed to the animator who then makes the needed animations. The final asset with animations is then integrated into the engine by the lead developer.

Participant 8:

The company: SpaceProofGames

Spaceproof Games is a game startup founded in 2012 and it is located in South-Western Finland in the city of Kaarina. The founders of the company have an extensive background in software development and

entrepreneurship. The development team is small consisting of only 4 people from whom 1 level designer works only part time. The CEO also works in business development and game design. The programmer in the team is described by the CEO to be the best programmer in the world having extensive background in software development which is easily transferred to game development as well. The company is developing its first game which will be ninja-rope style platformer for mobile devices.

The tasks

The company´s first game has been in development for about one year now. The basic game mechanics are familiar from other titles but from different platforms. The team has used about 4 months to research and fine-tune the game control mechanics for touch screen devices. When the control mechanics were set the team worked for about 6 months to produce the graphics and level design. The major goal in this process was to utilize the control mechanics to their full extent and create a polished gameplay where level design works together with the control mechanics. The game will utilize Chipmunk physics engine as basis for gameplay. The company has customized the physics engine greatly to better suit their needs. The team feels that it would have been better to utilize Unity3D engine to their production pipeline instead of current tools which would have made a lot of things a lot easier.


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9. Phase C: Requirements analysis and documentation

9.1 Scope

In this section we analyze the participants' responses on the semi-structured interviews. Qualitative data analysis [24] was used to analyze the collected interview data, and statistical techniques were applied on the collected objective metrics with regards to the perceived usefulness and ease of use of the CR-PLAY approach. The analysis process involved identifying patterns and similarities with regards to the participant’s responses, searching for various relationships between data, CR-PLAY validation objectives and user roles (e.g. 3D artists, game programmers, game designers and game producers etc.). It is important to underpin that qualitative data analysis focuses in extracting meaning from data aiming to understand user’s perceptions and intentions in adopting and using the CR-PLAY approach.

9.2 Method

The data analysis phase of the requirement validation study followed sequentially steps. First, the answers from all semi-structured interviews were transcribed by the interviewers. For the transcription we adopted a coding schema based on the CR-PLAY validation dimensions (please see section the CR-PLAY Validation goals section).

We coded the participant responses by reflecting the validation goals and annotated the participant responses according to the discussion theme, the game developer company, the participants’ role and the unique identifier of the interview. Following this approach we created a common template that was used by the analyst group (UPAT and CUR). An example of the results of the produced interviews transcriptions is shown in Figure 16 where arrow A indicates the validation goal, arrow B indicates the participants transcript label (indicated the time of the audio recorded interview the participant expressed his opinion followed by his companies abbreviation, his role within the company and the interview unique identifier), arrow C indicates the interviewee’s response and finally arrow D correlates the participants response with the validation question.

Figure 16. Semi structured interviews transcript example

The transcriptions were added on a common template and were discussed with the analysis team. Subsequently, the results were analyzed by summarizing the prevalence of categories and identifying further groupings or relationships through brainstorming sessions which were conducted by the analysis team.

In addition, various content analysis techniques, such as frequencies or counts of events/mentions, were performed along with narrative and correspondence analysis that aimed to create user role profiles in accordance to their responses to the semi-structured interviews.

The interviewed data were analyzed by a team that consisted of 5 experienced members (3 members from UPAT and 2 members from CUR). Initially, each team (UPAT and CUR) analyzed separately according to the aforementioned coding the data. Then, the teams met for a 3 days (10th to 13th of February) working schedule at UPAT aiming to discuss findings derived from the conducted interviews and plan further activities for this deliverable.


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9.3 Results

In this section we analyze the findings derived from the conducted interviews. The analysis focuses firstly on user’s motivation and concerns in adopting the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video games development.

MOTIVATION IN USING CR-PLAY

In general there has been an overall agreement across all participants regarding the main motivation in using CR-PLAY. Participants agreed that their main motivation would be to decrease the costs of developing photorealistic 3D-content in video games, to use the CR-PLAY as a fast prototype methodological approach that would allow them to examine various assets on game design ideas aiming to decide which asset best fit for a certain video game, to increase the photorealism of assets in their games, to use the CR-PLAY approach like an “automated translation tool” so that they can edit the produced outcome and to create video games with localized content. Particularly, the game producer showed interest in developing video games that can be played within a local context as the games would embrace known artifacts of their towns, buildings or streets.

Below we provide some participants responses with regards to their motivation in using the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video games development:

“My main motivation in using the CR-PLAY approach is to have quick, photorealistic environment for our games. [3D artist]”, “Saving time. From the artist’s point of view the graphics must be of high quality. If you think technology available today it is really time consuming to model outdoor conditions. [game designer]” ”I do not think this tools helps developing fictional games at all and especially mobile games. However, if you think about games in realistic environments this tool could speed up the process a lot. It depends in the end how many hours you need to spend optimizing the textures. [game programmer]”

“Most importantly, we require that any tool supports our development process and makes the game to look like we want it. Second most important matter is that the needed time spent to use the assets. Third issues are how much it costs to use. We often outsource asset development not to hire people. [game producer]” , “Speaking as a producer, the main issue is to have a quick photorealistic content production, decreasing the overall cost of the video game content production. [game producer]”

“This tool takes away the freedom of doing from the artist but it also would make the collaboration easier between an artist and a modeller because they can easier to agree about the materials to be used. Programmers get faster access to raw materials which also help discussions. [game designer]”

“Let’s say we make a game for a city and we do not know which city European, Japanese or Arab city. With the CR-PLAY approach we could fast prototype and this would help us very fast decide. Another motivation is to embed famous buildings, old cars or ancient roman items. It would be really important to have the same feeling with the reality instead of allowing the 3d modellers to make assumptions with regards to the scale, structure, texture and colors and perhaps losing time and money, so CR-PLAY will certainly work as a fast prototyping tool for indie game developers [game developer]”, “It would be very useful to do prototyping with this tool when we start developing 3D games. [game designer]”

“New kind of games could be produced and promoted by providing the possibility to the player to feel like being in a knowing local place. [game producer]”, “...it would be great to play a game in my


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own city for example, in my streets, I mean that would be very cool [game programmer]l”, “create local games for tourists or use the CR-PLAY approach as a marketing tool in order to create games lets say for hotels and if the player wins he gets one day free lunch or whatever. [game producer]“

“I think capture and playing in meaningful places would be nice. Like Lego did some time ago; you could take a picture of your house and Lego would send you the model and instructions to build it with Legos. I would not have to finish the whole process myself but get a chance to play it directly. That would be cool. [game designer]”, “How quickly can I get the captured materials to Grand Theft Auto for instance to model the city? [game designer]”

“I would use this tool like automatic translations. You get semi-ready materials and you can produce a lot of materials easily to test how they work in the game. [game designer]”, “In our case we wanted to represent a building that is no longer exists. However we have its model with all the details of the building in the museum. If we could take photos of the models and could create the model in one day having all the details on. [3D artist]”

CONCERNS IN USING CR-PLAY

Despite the aforementioned positive attitude of the participants in adopting the CR-PLAY approach they were also asked about their concerns regarding a successful integration of CR-PLAY in their existing workflow and content pipeline of video games development. The participants concerns and responses varied depending on the participant’s roles within the game development pipeline. Their concerns were related to the following: a) the changes in the 3D artists working context as the CR-PLAY approach affects primarily the content creation of video games, b) the quality of the produced results in each step of the CR-PLAY approach (main concern of the game programmes was whether the imported CR-PLAY assets will behave like regular game objects in their favourite game engines whereas the main concerts of the 3d artists were related on the quality of the reconstruction tool and whether the produced output will be modifiable in terms of style, scale, textures and colours), c) how CR-PLAY will support the communication among various team members during the capture phase and with regards to a particular game design, d) the difficulties in finding real objects to capture which would fit into the game design (especially the game designers expressed this concern),and e) the usefulness of capture animated elements.


With regards to changes in the working context:

“Adopting the CR-PLAY approach means that we will not do any modeling or we will model the basic structure. Seems that we are not needed. [3D artist]”, “… the 3D artist will not create but modify assets when using the CR-PLAY approach. [3D artist]”, “New team members with new skills for capture and reconstruction will be required. [game designer]”, “Well it could speed up artists work. Maybe there could other people who could take the role of the artist, like producer or anybody. [game programmer]”

With regards to the quality of the produced results:

“The only technical concern we have is about the tuning needed to make all materials of the same quality. [game designer]” , “If you can choose how many vertexes you want to import to the 3D model this approach would work well. [game designer]”, “Behaving like a game object like right click and a modify appears that allow me to do certain things with the game object from rotating to scaling manipulating, moving in the scene. [game programmer]”, “The quality of the produced


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model after the reconstruction will determine to a great degree whether this objects will be finally used in the game play. The quality must be perfect and even then I would need to be able to edit the model, change textures etc. [3D artist]”, “I would like CR-PLAY gives me a classical model with the basic structure elements of a 3D model with the difference that the texture will be provided by the CR-PLAY. [game producer]”, “How complicated will be the model created by CR-PLAY. Will CR-PLAY provides me with the right textures in order to create a realistic scene. Would be easy to use it as we have vision it and how we could set surfaces and how we could (modify) intervene on the photo. [3D artist]”

“The quality of the data coming out from the capture has to be very good because it is already so cheap and easy to buy models. [game producer]”, “From the artist’s point of view the graphics must be of high quality. If you think technology available today it is really time consuming to model outdoor conditions. [game designer]”, “I think reducing the time of developing prototypes would the best case for this tool. I do not think outcome will be the final materials, though. [3D artist]”.

With regards to effective team collaboration:

”How effective the team collaboration will be supported by CR-PLAY, this is related mostly with the quality control of the captured images or video and how the captured images can be shared in real time with the game designers etc. Well it won’t be that much cost effective if they need to travel to Paris many times to capture the desired assets. [game designer]”, “Depends on how good and effective the real time collaboration will be among the team members in order to keep everything as it was planned in the game design. [3D artist]”,“They could take pictures and sent the pictures to the studios over the internet in the same night to develop a prototype e.g. between Wisconsin and Kotka. As soon as they have taken pictures then they would send it to the studio. [game designer]”

“What comes first to my mind is that it seems that the tool does not give enough instructions about all the materials needed. For instance, if you capture material and then you notice at the office you missed something the weather might have changed.[3D artist]”

With regards to animated elements:

“It is difficult to see the value capture animated elements as it is difficult to train a dog according to the game design to jump this way or that way. [game designer]”, “The animated assets are usually strictly connected with the game design so I think that the animated elements should be produced with the traditional approach. [3D artist] ”

“It think the least useful this tool would be to develop animated objects. The most promising would be outdoor objects such as forest or mountains because it takes a lot of time to process them. [3D artist]”

With regards to equipment needed:

“My concern is if we have to buy equipment like specific lens, camera extensions mobile or pc. [game producer]”

HOW TO SUPPORT CR-PLAY's TEAM MEMBER COMMUNICATION DURING THE CAPTURE PHASE

We asked participants to think about a perfect CR-PLAY collaboration approach that would address the major concerns. Almost all participants stated the need to be able to share and in real time the captured assets with team members. They participants imagine sharing the assets via dropbox, via email but also


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through a CR-PLAY repository that would allow the logical grouping of assets according to a game design, such an approach would facilitate the capture phase as the user when logged in on the capture tool would select the appropriate game design for which he is currently capturing images and the capture tool would (when the user decides) send the captured material on the representative folders. Thus, a quality control on captured and reconstructed assets according to the game design specifications is required. Furthermore, there has been the idea to organize assets in a common repository according to the game design and allow access to these files to the team members according to their role and permissions granted. Some participants also proposed adopting a crowd sourcing-approach for CR-PLAY allowing many users to capture photos from assets and putting them into the repository for later use.


“The communication in real time is very important as there is the need to examine the output of the reconstruction in order to decide whether the style (textures, density of polygons, colours etc.) are of the desired quality, also using the captured assets in the favourite game engine seems to be important for deciding if the capture phase has been finished or not. [game designer]”

“Allow and efficiently support collaboration interactions among team members in order to assure and have high quality control of the captured and reconstructed assets. [3D artist]”, “The only concern I am thinking about is that there should be repository where to store for instance layouts of the buildings. [3D artist]”

“Currently we are so small team that we can integrate any tool to our pipeline. I feel like it depends on the game but often graphics design is a iterative process. You design, change, play and iterate it and this needs to be supported as well in CR-PLAY. I think this would be brought to the current practices and actually will be the same process as bringing any other 3D stuff in the game. [game designer]”, “Very quick to see the pictures and the lightening and the reconstruction etc. As a game designer I need to control everything the team is doing with my game, this is the game designers responsibility. [game designer]”

“Real time communication among the one who captures and the game designer I must see them on my computer and say yes good or not so good, before finishing the capture of a certain scene and moving to another. The output of the capture phase must not be so big (in size) because otherwise it is not possible to have a fast communication between team members. Sharing files with the team is very important. [game designer]”

“They will be a separation among the people who create the capture and the people who decide on the quality. The communication is very important in real time as depending on the game play we might need more detail on a certain part of a building and therefore we might need to inform the capture team that more pictures are needed to be taken from a particular point because of the game design. Maybe a real time communication is a solution, trying the assets in real time within the game engine (e.g. the pictures go directly into the dropbox folder and we do the reconstructions and use it within the game engine). [game programmer]”, “If CR-PLAY becomes famous or start to be on the internet to have people to speak about that, is to have a database of images and put the result on the internet (crowd sourcing) also because in the next years mobile phone and cameras will be amazing on the qualitative point of view. To have a central repository of images and not to need to re-capture a street or building if it is already in the repository would be great. [3D artist]”


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WHICH ASSETS ARE MORE IMPORTANT TO CAPTURE WHEN USING CR-PLAY

We asked participants which assets would be most useful to capture: a) indoor objects, b) outdoor objects, c) animated elements (fountains, moving trees, flags, moving cars etc.). The participants agreed that the usefulness depends on the game design so they could imagine cases in which outdoor, indoor and animated elements could be applicable. However the stated that usually the most useful would be outdoor complex assets (like big buildings, complex architectures, terrains, whole street etc.), as these are usually difficult to be created by the 3D-modellers and usually there are libraries for indoor assets. With regards to the animated elements there have been response that it could be very useful for companies who have not the resources to do the animations. However some concerns were related to the fact that animated elements are strictly related to the game design and therefore they need to behave in a certain way that is difficult to find or reproduce in the real world, so the usefulness of animated part of CR-PLAY is somehow restricted.

Below we provide some participants responses.

“Well I can imagine the need to capture indoor and outdoor elements. But that would be depending on the game design.[game designer]”

“Depends on the game but we have both indoor, outdoor, and many animated elements.”, “Indoor and outdoor are important depending on the game. As a programmer I do not care but in a general point of view both seems important.[game programmer]”

“Indoor objects are easy to do in house and animated elements it is better if we do it by an artists or an animator to have a better overall control, animated elements are very strictly related to the game design so it is difficult to see if the CR-PLAY would be any useful on that front.[3D artist]”

CR-PLAY’s CAPTURE PHASE

We asked participants to share observations on CR-PLAY’s capture phase. We summarize the findings below:

a) the participants stated the need to be able to align captured assets to a particular game design, to organize and share results with appropriate team members

b) the participants stated the need to be able to capture assets by simply using the mobile phone, or the tablet, they stated that special equipment would work as an obstacle for them for easy adoption the CR-PLAY approach

c) the participants stated the need to have an intelligent guidance that will inform the user about the next best view position, the correct angle or whether enough pictures have been taken, in one case a participant expressed the idea to use the GPS coordinates and download pictures already taken from other users from the CR-PLAY repository

d) furthermore all the participants stated as an important requirement to have a quick preview on the mobile phone with regards to the captured assets to perform a quick first hand quality control (e.g.” this is very important because you have to be sure that the pictures you have taken are ok”, “It is important to have a very quick preview within the capture tools so that the guys who capture make a first quality control before sending to us the output”)


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e) aligned with the previous point important requirements were related with regards to the interrelation among the desired quality of the representation and the pictures needed to be taken in the capture phase for a particular asset and for a certain game design.


“The capture tools must be somehow aligned with what I want to capture and how I want to use it in my game. For example if I want to use a mountain as a backdrop then I do not need to capture lots of images and I do not want a high resolution result, but if I am running down the mountain then it is a different story. [game designer]”, “The quality of the wanted reconstruction should guide the number of images that need to be taken from the capture tool. Otherwise I will need to capture more photos then I need in the case of a low quality reconstruction or less photos then I need for a high quality reconstruction.[3D artist]”

“I think it would be important that you could map all the details. I mean like focus in some area of a building and then mention it to the tool. Then you could use that spot in various places as they look the same altogether. [3D artist]”

”My concern is what I have to take with me (any special equipment) in order to capture an asset.” [3D artist] “, “I would like to use a simple mobile device for capture but only in the case that this will not have an effect in the final realistic result.[3D artist]”, “what do I need to have with me in order take photos, only a camera would be enough? [3D artist]”

“It would be good if the capture process would be very well instructed as it is expensive to travel between places and mistakes become expensive. [game designer]”, “Still besides this the team members need to be able to communicate in real time as mentioned above. [game designer]”

”..this is very important because you have to be sure that the pictures you have taken are ok”, “It is important to have a very quick preview within the capture tools so that the guys who capture make a first quality control before sending to us the output. [3D artist]”, “I would like to be able to see what I have captured even if it is in low quality. An instant render to check the view angle of the taken photos. [3D artist]”

“How I will find the right shooting angle, what are the options provided by capture to create a more flexible scene like when a character jumps on a building. [3D artist]”

CR-PLAY’s RECONSTRUCTION PHASE

We asked participants to share observations on CR-PLAY’s reconstruction phase. The reconstruction phase is considered by the participants as most critical of the overall success of CR-PLAY. Almost all interviewees stated as very important the reconstruction phase and especially 3D artist and game designers agreed about the need to be able to modify/edit and transform the produced outcome of the reconstruction phase in case the game design needs some modification on the produced assets. Furthermore, there was an agreement on the requirement to be able to set up the quality of the resolution in the construction phase and the need for a fast reconstruction process. However, when the participant were asked where they would prefer to use the reconstruction tool their answers varied among the capture device, to a standalone tool and within the game development engine.



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“3D models should meet our criteria for quality and I hope we get raw data out in a nice an interoperative way to use and re-use in modeling tools we are familiar with. [3D artist]” “It was quite amazing how it could put all those pictures together and fix the light conditions. It would be important to make the process automatized and make all materials look and be standardized. My concern is that that how precise the cloud points will be there in the model. I can see from the materials you showed that there are problems with zooming and in the actual game that is unacceptable. [3D artist]”

“The models must have a high quality of style (textures, colours etc.) otherwise the 3D artists will have difficulties in using them. [game designer]”, “It is important to have a fast reconstruction phase because now having volumes, surfaces, texture and details of an object inside unity rendering takes too long. [3D artist]”

“To use it in game production and not as fast prototype tool it should provide a reconstruction mesh model that can be modified by artists and have separate layers of complexity, textures and illumination. [3D artist]”, “Let’s say that we have captured a building but I do not need so many windows, or I do need more windows I need to be able to modify it. [game designer]”, “Imagine that I have captured a car and I want to make the door open or I want to change the color of the car. [3D artist]”, “In particular for cultural heritage games it would be nice to capture a model of an ancient building and I can get only the model out of it and can assign textures etc. this would safe so much time and it would be accurate. [3D artist]”, “If you mean that the materials are used later to be modified this might work. I don’t think you can automatically optimize the images without any extra work especially when it comes to animating characters. [3D artist]”

“It would be necessary to choose among low and high quality reconstruction e.g. if the object is not close to the camera then I do not need a high resolution but a low resolution. So it is important to be able to have access to resolutions options within unity. The level of detail for textures and the mesh models exists as well for the traditional assets. [3D artist]”

“I personally believe game development is much about manual work, optimizing every polygon. This approach will have a lot of noise and too many polygons. I am sure there will be a lot unsuccessful data and the artist has to modify it anyways. I doubt you can make this process automatic. [game designer]”, “Resolution and quality of the data should be able to be modified. Raw data should be as precise as possible. [game designer]”

“Preferable to have fast and permanent reconstruction one time and then just use it into the game engine and then I need to make changes into unity like removing objects, change light conditions handle the polygons for the reconstruction. [3D artist]”, “Important is to play among high and low resolution and having a dynamic light modeling is very important. [game designer]”

“I am concerned about the error might occur by the movement of the user while following the guidance in capture phase. [game producer]”, “My concerns is if the system can understand the volume of an object for example if I capture an angle how the NBV understands that this is an angle and how to handle issues with different angles and perspectives of the scene in order to have a good side look of the object, so the scene will look more realistic. [3D artist]”

“The important issue is to provide a reconstruction mesh model that can be modified by artists and have separate layers of complexity, textures and illumination.[3D artist]”, “We have captured a building but I do not need so many windows, or I do need more windows”, “imagine that I have captured a car and I want to make the door open or I want to change the color of the car”, “in


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particular for cultural heritage games it would be nice to capture a model of an ancient building and I can get only the model out of it and can assign textures etc. this would safe so much time and it would be accurate”, “I would like to be able to (modify) change the object and interact with CR-PLAY objects the same way I do with the traditional objects, open a door or a window.[3D artist]“,” I want to be able to modify the produced object and I am concerning how the system could recognize a specific object in the photo and produce a cloud mesh I can modify.[ 3D artist]”

“The reconstruction tool could be both inside the game engine and also as a separate tool. As separate tool to control the details of an object like lighting, textures, quality of resolution. As a plug-in inside the game engine to avoid back and forth if a correction is needed. [game developer]”, “having in mind not only using mobiles but also nowadays powerful tablets for capture, a part of the reconstruction could be done inside the tablet having a good result. [game developer]”

CR-PLAY’s PLAY PHASE

We asked participants to share observations on CR-PLAY’s play phase. In general the major requirement expressed by participants is related to their need to interact with the reconstructed assets as they usually do with the assets created within the traditional pipeline. We summarize the finding below:

“To have inside the game engine a typical behaviour of the imported CR-PLAY assets like the traditional assets. [game programmer]”

This is most critical as when going into production everything needs to be perfect so the CR-PLAY assets really need to behave exactly the same like the other game objects created with the traditional workflow. [game designer]”

“To be able to easily import into my game engine the assets and test them as regular game objects, behaving like a game object like right click and a modify appears that allow me to do certain things with the game object from rotating to scaling manipulating, moving in the scene. [game programmer]”

“Take an example of a market place. It would be cool if you could rip apart the whole picture. Make all objects dynamic like doors moving. I mean, you have nice looking photorealistic environment but nothing seems to move.[3D artist]”

CR-PLAY’s INTEROPERABILITY WITH INDUSTRY STANDART FORMATS AND ENGINES

Participants stressed that the compatibility of CR-PLAY system with other software tools is critical.

“I want to use the CR-PLAY assets with MAYA, RHINO, 3DSMAX and other tools. [3D artist+”, “Materials should work with 3D max, in our case it has to work in mobile phone platforms which means really detailed optimization. [3D artist]”, “The materials should support various output formats. We use Blender. Maybe you could use a tripod to help taking pictures. I would use professional camera instead of a mobile phone. [3D artist]”

“The CR-PLAY approach is important to be compatible with other software tools like 3DSMAX because while importing assets in 3DSMAX may cause incompatibility in textures/materials etc. [3D artist] “

“3D models should meet our criteria for quality and I hope we get raw data out in a nice an interoperative way to use and re-use in modeling tools we are familiar with. [3D artist]”,” It seems


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that wavefron.obj format is something I can use when I move objects from one tool to another. I think this tool would mostly benefit PC and console game development rather than mobile platforms. [3D Artist]”

”It is out of doubt that CR-PLAY should be compatible with other software tools and modifications in CR-PLAY files should be propagated inside the s/w tools. [3D artist]”

“Ideally the CR-PLAY should be compatible with the majority of game engines like Unity, CryEngine etc. [game producer]”

However, with regards to the compatibility with other game engines there were as well some opinions to make the CR-PLAY tools compatible with the Unity game engine as this is the most famous game engine for indie game developers.

“I don’t think that indie game developers can afford developing with other game engines than Unity3D. Therefore I suggest that Unity should be the first priority. [game designer]”,”For our case we would like CR-PLAY to play within Unity3D as this is the game engine we use in our company. [3D artist]”

PARTICIPATNS OBJECTIVE RESPONSES ON PERCEIVED USEFULNESS AND EASY OF USE

Regarding the perceived usefulness the participants score is very high (range 5,7 to 6,1) and their answers have low standard deviation (σ) which ranges from 0,7 to 1,3 (Figure 17).

Figure 17. CR-PLAY Perceived usefulness

Regarding the perceived ease of use of the CR-PLAY system and given that the aforementioned concerns will be satisfied the participants perceive the CR-PLAY as easy to use. Their scores are very close to the mean which is in range from 5,7 to 6,5 and their answers don’t tend to spread-out of the mean as standard deviation indicates. Standard deviation ranges from 0,5 to 1,2 (Figure 18).


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Figure 18. CR-PLAY Ease of use

Regarding the perceived innovation of the CR-PLAY system, the majority of participants tended to answered each question in the same way, with a mean of 6,6 . Standard deviation ranges from 0,5 to 0,7.

Figure 19. CR-PLAY Innovation

9.4 CR-PLAY Personas

Persona is a user-centered design method which provides a practical approach to understanding better the requirements and simultaneously keeping user perspectives in mind when designing interactive systems [31]. The persona represents patterns of users’ behaviour, goals and motives, compiled in a fictional


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description of a single individual [31]. It also contains made-up personal details, in order to make the persona more tangible, alive and memorable for the development team [32]. Within a user-centered design approach personas are refined throughout the projects life time by taking into consideration results of conducted user studies. In this context, we used the information from the requirements gathering phase and the results of the semi-structured interviews to develop three personas. The images used for the personas were derived from [33], [34], [35].

Heinz Becker – 3D Artist

Heinz is a 3D artist. He loves creating new worlds, characters and assets and to transform them into digital artifacts. To him, being a 3D video game artist is both a hobby and a profession. He considers himself a talented video game artist and is now working for a leading company in the video game sector. Currently he uses Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max modeling

and texture tool sets for creation and design of environments, characters and game assets from concept to completion based on ideas presented by his art director.

Heinz was introduced to the CR-PLAY tools by his art director. He is a little bit sceptical about the impact that CR-PLAY (or similar) tools will have on his professional work. Capture and reconstructing real world objects is a nice idea (but not completely new) and he wants to explore how easy the CR-PLAY tools are to use and if the proposed workflow adapts to his own in a transparent manner.

Some other tools are already in the market (e.g the Photosynth from Microsoft) however this tool does not export the captured images in any standard format like COLLADA and FBX which are standards in the video games industry and are thus supported by the most well known game authoring and/or 3D modelling environments. Nonetheless, Heinz is willing to explore the functionalities offered by the CR-PLAY capture and re-constructing tools as his goal is to speed up the creation of game assets decreasing the time he needs to deliver a design idea in a visual representation.

A particular feature Heinz likes in the CR-PLAY approach is that once data has been captured, its integration and rendering are performed via a specially developed adaptation/extension of existing game authoring software. Thus, he is not forced to learn another complex tool and can just continue using the tools he knows already. Thus, integrating the CR-PLAY approach in his own workflow seems to be efficient and effective as standard file formats like COLLADA and FBX are supported. Heinz needs usually to modify the output of the reconstruction because it is difficult to find a real life object that meets or criteria according to the game design (e.g. removing or adding windows to a captured building etc.). These formats are also desirable as the technical directors and script programmers are using the Unreal, Unity3D and CryEngine game engines for implementing the actual game mechanics. Thus, interoperability is a major concern across the various team members of the video game company.

Heinz also wants to annotate captured assets for later reference. In general Heinz uses the CR-PLAY tools to capture several scenes or objects from the real world, therefore keeping notes and align them with the game design helps him for the latter reconstruction tasks. The CR-PLAY capture tool allows Heinz also to annotate and share the captured assets according to the game design making it easier for further

Demographics •27 years old •3D Artist •Languages: German and English (secondary) Education •Master in 3D Modeling in the UK •Studied graphic design as an undergraduate in Germany Computer Proficiency •Experienced user of Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya environments •Average user of Blender, Zbrush, SketchUp, Painter and Photoshop •No scripting / programming background Goals •Decreasing the time for delivering a high quality visual representation of a design idea.


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elaboration of team members (e.g. art director, level designer, character or environmental artists). With this efficient approach the time and cost of asset creation drops substantially and allows Heinz to communicate faster with the art director or relevant game designers to evaluate the capture objects thus increasing the communication and exchange of ideas among the team members. In fact, like in other similar products, Heinz can easily share the captured objects with his co-workers by using social networks increasing thus communication and collaboration among them. Such an increased collaboration among the team members combined with the CR-PLAY’s mixed pipeline leads with no doubt to the creation of more creative game assets.

Erin White – Game Designer & Programmer

Erin is a 38 year-old passionate game designer and art director at a video game company located at Dublin, Ireland. The company’s mission is to create high quality 3D causal video games. Erin’s runs the entire creative process, providing direction and feedback to the various teams of artists in the content creation pipeline. His role is to envision the entire game and create a

detailed design document to guide the various art and technical teams executing the game. Usually a design document specifies story, game play, settings, characters, environments etc.

He works on average 40 hours a week, but additional hours, including early mornings, evenings and weekends, are likely to be required at busy times, particularly when deadlines are near. The corporate uses for modeling purposes the Blender 3D modeling environment and the Unreal Development Kit as a game engine.

Erin has heard about the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video game development and is attracted by this approach as it provides a cost effective way to create very fast game prototypes. Following the traditional pipeline for content creation in video game development a prototype of the game assets could last for months. With the CR-PLAY tools his team is able to capture and embed into the traditional pipeline various backdrops which allow them to select the most visual appealing version of a game. By combining real life captured objects (walls, chairs, desks, streets, buildings, etc.) with traditional content created with standard game authoring tools he is able to give scenes a coherent look and feel both in terms of lighting conditions and textures. Such an approach seems to be time and cost efficient but he still has some worries relating to the actual use of the CR-PLAY tools and how easily his team can adapt to the mixed-pipeline proposed. Adopting the CR-PLAY approach will require hiring and training new people and transform the internal content creation pipeline. Furthermore, he is concerned on how the artists will react to this new technology.

The CR-PLAY editor is seamlessly integrated in the existing complete game development suite which the company already uses (game engine, rendering engine, various editors), and thus the team is able to work on the scene and see it in real time as it will appear in the game. From a programmer’s point of view Eric likes the way the CR-PLAY captured assets behave inside the game engine. He can interact with the CR-PLAY objects as he interacts with assets created with the traditional pipeline. This way interventions and modifications are done without waiting for the game to be compiled and launched, saving many work

Demographics • 38 years old Male • Lives in Ireland • Native Language English Education and Occupation • BSc (Honours) Computer Games Technology, University of Abertay Dundee BA (Honours) Computer Arts, University of Abertay Dundee • Game Designer and 3D artist experience for over 12 years working in various corporates in the video game industry Computer Proficiency • Experienced user of the Unreal, CryEngine video game packages Experienced user of Blender 3D Modeling tool Goals • To increase productivity and quality in content creation

• To follow cost effective approaches to create very fast game prototypes.

• Create more creative games faster and cheaper


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hours with better quality. With the photorealistic game scenes in place, the team can now focus on the other interesting aspects for making up the game, such as interactivity and game play.

Lynda Hart – Video Game Producer

Lynda is the head of the game development company Creative Games Ltd. based in Helsinki, Finland. Lynda makes sure all the artists stick to the game designer's vision, and they set and maintain deadlines and the overall budget. Along with game designers, she producers original ideas for new games, determining how the game will be played,

what will draw people to it, and what sort of world it will be set in. People such as Lynda are usually not artists to realize their ideas. Lynda believes that it is very important for anyone working in the computer games industry to keep up to date with technological developments and market information, and to update their skills throughout their careers and be competitive in a fast moving industry. Therefore she attends the most popular tradeshows in the video game industry. In such a conference she saw the mixed video game development pipeline of CR-PLAY. In particular she is interested as this approach might enrich the way her team is actual working. Indeed, she believes that the industry will be able to render real time environments that are absolutely photo-realistic within the next years. Nonetheless, she is not sure whether the video game players will accept this technological shift as she believes that video games offer to players primarily another reality they can interact with. Furthermore, she is concerned about the mixed-pipeline development as the assets captured through the CR-PLAY capture tools will have a different visual appeal and still a learning curve is needed by her group aiming to familiarize with the CR-PLAY editing tools.

9.5 Discussion

Video game development is mainly a collaboration activity which embraces complex communication and collaboration processes among several team members who share different roles within the video game development pipeline (e.g. video game producers, game designers, concept artists, 3D/2.5D/2D artists and animators, level designers, game programmers etc.). In this realm a video game development team needs to communicate and interact very often and iteratively with the aim to share common goals on several aspects of a video game which is under development. In this context, it is important to observe that there are established procedures, team collaboration activities and tools used aiming to produce high quality video games in an efficient and effective manner (this can be derived from the description of the companies that participated in the requirements analysis study).

In this context CR-PLAY envisions to decrease the cost and time of content creation and simultaneously provide high quality photorealistic assets that can be used and re-used in the development process of video games. This is a an ambitious objective, a promise of accelerating the whole process, as it relates to the most expensive and time consuming part of the video game creation pipeline. Therefore, as it has been anticipated the participants of the requirements validation study share a positive attitude towards adopting CR-PLAY mixed development pipeline of contents creation. They perceived the approach as very useful and innovative with the potential of solving an outstanding issue.

Demographics • 42 years old married • Lives in Helsinki • Native language Finnish Secondary language English Education and Occupation • High School Diploma • BA with Honors in Economic Studies from Bradford University in the UK • MBA from City University Cass Business School in London Computer Proficiency • Experienced user in desktop applications • Experienced user in Enterprise Resolution Planning systems Goals • Produce high quality video games Decrease development costs of video game content creation • Decrease time to market and therefore enhance competitiveness


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However, besides the positive predisposition expressed by the game developer companies in adopting the CR-PLAY approach, the requirements validation study revealed concerns related to the CR-PLAY approach. The critical concerns of the participants are related to the quality of the representations, the degree in which the representations can be modified, the capability of controlling the quality of the assets as well as support for team member communication during the capture phase, the guidance during the capture that must be related with the desired quality of an asset and the overall management of the captured and reconstructed assets within a certain game design.

It is important, according to the interviewees, that the quality of the produced assets is comparable to that produced by the traditional approach. At the same time the produced assets in order to be accepted by the game developers, should be interoperable with traditional tools they are used to work with. Furthermore it is essential to minimize the perceived difficulty in learning and using the CR-PLAY approach and associated tools by its representative users. The requirements validation study provided evidence about the need to minimize the effort of using and interacting with the CR-PLAY assets (e.g. game programmers want them to behave like regular game objects and 3D artists want to be able to edit and modify the representation and at the same time change structural, behavioural and look and feel aspects of the imported assets).

With regards to the quality control of the captured assets it is clear that it should be supported by a CR-PLAY repository and aligned within a game design document. The idea of having a CR-PLAY repository that would support a community of game developers to manage captured assets aligned to a particular game design document seems to be an effective and efficient solution that could also support the capture activity.

With regards to the reconstruction tool there have been diverse opinions whether it should be a standalone tool or an embedded functionality in a particular game engine. There are pros and cons for each approach which are mainly related to the desired outcome. While the game developers wish to easily change the resolution of the models back and forth within the game engines in order to test the game mechanics and finally to deploy the high resolution quality, the game artists prefer to have a tool that would allow them to modify the reconstructed model and separately view model structure, texture, colours and play with lighting, resolution and be able to export it to other modelling tools for further customizations. The novel representation of Image and Video-Based assets in CR-PLAY poses a set of interesting questions that will be addressed as part of the research developed throughout the project. Quality control and iterative capture are interesting issues that must be addressed while developing the core algorithms.

10. Conclusion

The aim of this deliverable: “D4.1. End-user Requirements analysis” is to analyse end-users’ perceptions, goals and needs with regards to the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video games development. These requirements are an essential first step towards an iterative software development cycle. In this context, it is important to stress once again that within a user centred design approach, the End-user Requirements document is a living document which is continuously revised and enhanced throughout the project’s life time according to technology and research developments, end-users feedback and partner’s refined vision of CR-PLAY. Evidently, the research dimension of CR-PLAY will be a predominant factor in the evolution of the Requirements document. In many cases, the requests from users require research which is beyond the scope of CR-PLAY, since many more basic problems need to be solved first. However, it is interesting to keep these requests in mind when setting a future research agenda, and most importantly when developing plans for exploitation in CR-PLAY.


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The CR-PLAY vision was presented in different levels of abstraction (e.g. technical, procedural, conceptual and business level) to seventeen (17) persons who had different roles in the video game production pipeline and were representative CR-PLAY users. A qualitative analysis of the gathered data has been adopted since the relatively small number of participants does not allow for a reliable statistical analysis of the gathered results. Extracts of participants’ views have been presented with the aim to reflect the perceived impact and usefulness of the CR-PLAY approach. From the analysis presented in the aforementioned sections there has been an overall positive interest in the CR-PLAY approach. However, the participants stated some concerns and expressed doubts about the CR-PLAY approach being integrated smoothly in their game development processes. Many participants also expressed interest for hands-on experience with the new technology in order to be able to provide more in depth feedback.

There has been an agreement between participants that there is a clear value in this approach, i.e. saving time and money with using CR-PLAY technology. However most participants conditioned this benefit with the quality of the produced representations of the captured assets. In addition, they wished to be able to use these representations in their favourite editors. Otherwise they claim that they would use the CR-PLAY rather as a fast prototyping approach.

Several functional and non-functional requirements were identified by the participants with regards to the capture, reconstruction and playing activities and have been presented in the analysis section. The main ones, which have been reported by different individuals across video game development companies are:

a) Requirement for usable capture (low learning curve) and efficient sharing of captured assets among team members (repository, multiuser in cloud etc.),

b) Requirement need of CR-PLAY in serving the game play idea and not the other way around,

c) Requirement for optimization & quality control functionalities with regards to the captured assets and the produced representations,

d) The need of the game artists to be able to modify the produced representations of the captured assets

e) The produced representations to be interoperable with the current state of the art tools

f) The need of game programmers to interact with the imported CR-PLAY assets as they usually do with the assets created through the traditional content creation pipeline.

It is important to stress that the requirements analysis phase embraces several requirements as expressed by end-users which are from a technological point of view difficult to implement or even out of scope of the current project (e.g. the vary nature of Image and Video-Based representations precludes the use of a 3D mesh model reconstruction or support of real time collaboration with team members requires several orders of magnitude increase in computation speed and network bandwidth). However we believe that the value of this exercise is to let users express their wishes and requirements in this early stage of the project in order to set a number of priorities and challenges for the technology providers. It is evident that the final solution cannot be based solely on wishes of game developers as the developed algorithms and tools will be inevitably constrained by research and technological limitations as well as the resources available. It is the next phase of the project in which with the background of the user requirements document, we will decide what is feasible to achieve and then evaluate whether this is acceptable by the end users as a solution.

Validity and limitations of the requirements validation study


42

One fundamental limitation of the user-centred approach adopted in this project and the User Requirements study and its first phase, reported here, is that the users often resist change and maintain a bias towards their current way of thinking and acting, in terms of methods, tools used. So in case of disruptive new technologies, like CR-PLAY, they may fail to envisage the new potential and capabilities offered, that may change dramatically the way they conduct their work. In addition, they often feel threatened by the new approach, as their skills (e.g. in the case of modellers) may become useless and obsolete. So the reader of this Report should bear these remarks in mind, as the users expressed serious doubts towards this new approach and set some high requirements, which are perhaps too difficult to implement with the current state of the art technologies.

However, still the User Requirements study is a good starting point of reference for subsequent measure of user views and attitudes as the technology will be developed and they will get a chance to experience interacting with it. We believe that these attitudes will change and new capabilities will be identified. Thus this document is considered a reference document and not a set of desired functionalities to implement.

In addition, one may wonder if the findings of the study are valid. The validity of a study is primarily affected by its internal, external, and ecological validity. Internal validity reflects the accuracy of data and the conclusions drawn based on this data, external validity indicates whether the data and the conclusions drawn can be generalized to a wider extent [28], and ecological validity requires that the experimental design, procedure and setting of the study must approximate the real-life context that is under investigation [29].

With the aim to increase internal validity we recruited typical users, e.g. experienced professionals, to participate in the requirements validation study. The participants represented different stakeholder categories of the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline and were working in different video game companies from three different countries. Aiming to minimize bias effects, the technical presentation was conducted by three different persons of the consortium. In particular UPAT did the presentation to soFar, TL did the presentation to its internal game development team, and CUR to the Finnish companies. The presented material was produced by the Technology partners (INRIA, TUD).

With regards to the external validity of the study it is related with the number of participants and their expertise in the topic. As mentioned in the analysis section both of these aspects are sufficiently fulfilled in the requirements validation study.

There was also an attempt to increase ecological validity of the requirements validation study. However the technical presentation was interpreted by some participants as a barrier to deeply understand the CR-PLAY approach and how it could fit in detail to their workflow. They asked for hands on experience aiming to provide more qualitative feedback especially with regards to the reconstruction process. This is expected to be possible in the subsequent evaluation studies in which prototypes will be tested by typical users.

References [1] J. A. Goguen and C. Linde. Techniques for requirements elicitation. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, pages 152–164, Los Alamitos, California, 1993. IEEE CS Press.

[2] S. Robertson. Requirements Trawling: techniques for discovering requirements. Published electronically at http://www.systemsguild.com/GuildSite/Robs/trawling.html, 2004.

[3] “List of most expensive video games” On-line resource retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop

http://www.systemsguild.com/GuildSite/Robs/trawling.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop


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[4] Trap by David Wesley and Gloria Barczak (2010). Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game Industry: Avoiding the Performance. Chapter 10. Surrey, UK: Gower, 2010.

[5] Ruairí Brugha and Zsuzsa Varvasovszky. (2014) Stakeholder analysis: a review. Health Policy and Planning. 15(3) pp. 239-246.

[6] Bates, Bob (2004). Game Design (2nd ed.). Thomson Course Technology. ISBN 1-59200-493-8.

[7] Bethke, Erik (2003). Game development and production. Texas: Wordware Publishing, Inc. ISBN 1-55622-951-8.

[8] On-line resource : http://3d.about.com/

[9] “UV Layouts, Texturing,, Lighting and Shading tasks” On-line resource: http://3d.about.com/od/3d-101-The-Basics/a/Anatomy-Of-A-3d-Model.htm

[10] “Concept art and 3D modeling”. On-line resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_art

[11] “The Computer graphics pipeline”. On-line resource: http://3d.about.com/od/3d-101-The-Basics/tp/Introducing-The-Computer-Graphics-Pipeline.htm

[12] “Recommended game engines”. On-line resource: http://worldofleveldesign.com/categories/level_design_tutorials/recommended-game-engines.php

[13] “List of 3D modeling software”. On-line resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D_modeling_software

[14] “Anatomy of a 3D model”. On-line resource: http://3d.about.com/od/3d-101-The-Basics/a/Anatomy-Of-A-3d-Model.htm

[15] Tappen, M. F., Freeman, W. T., & Adelson, E. H. (2005). Recovering intrinsic images from a single image. IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence, 27(9), 1459.

[16] Catmull, Edwin Earl (1974). A subdivision algorithm for computer display of curved surfaces (PhD thesis). University of Utah.

[17] “CR-PLAY Technical Presentation”On-line resource: https://transfert.inria.fr/fichiers/029aef5f02f7276d0d473b4a3d75b90e/CRPLAY_Gamers.zip

[18] Fabian Langguth, Michael Goesele ,”Guided Capturing of Multi-view Stereo Datasets” In: Proceedings of Eurographics 2013 Short Papers.

[19] I. H. Holbrook. A scenario-based methodology for conducting requirements elicitation. SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, 15(1):95–104, 1990.

[20] Carroll, John M. Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions. MIT Press, 2000. ISBN 0-262-03279-1

[21] Granville Miller , Laurie Williams, Microsoft Corp and North Carolina State University(2006)“Personas: Moving Beyond Role-Based Requirements Engineering” http://agile.csc.ncsu.edu/SEMaterials/Personas.pdf

[22] M. Aoyama, “Persona-scenario-goal methodology for user centered requirements engineering,” in Proceedings of the15th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, 2007, A. Sutcliffe and P. Jalote, Eds. Los Alamitos, California: IEEE Computer Society, 2007, pp. 185–194.

[23] M. Aoyama. Persona-and-scenario based requirements engineering for software embedded in digital consumer products. In Requirements Engineering, 2005. Proceedings. 13th IEEE International Conference on, pages 85 – 94, 29 2005.

[24] Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldan_a, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: a methods sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, Califorinia: SAGE Publications, Inc.

[25] Guest, Greg; Bunce, Arwen & Johnson, Laura (2006). "How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability". Field Methods, 18(1), 59-82.

[26] Morse, Janice M. (1995). The significance of saturation. Qualitative Health Research, 5(3), 147-149.

[27] Morse, Janice, M. (2000). Determining sample size. Qualitative Health Research, 10(1), 3-5.

[28] Cook, T., and Campbell, D. Quasi-experimentation: Design and analysis issues for field settings. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA, USA, 1979.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1-59200-493-8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1-55622-951-8

http://3d.about.com/

http://3d.about.com/od/3d-101-The-Basics/a/Anatomy-Of-A-3d-Model.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D_modeling_software


http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=907242

https://transfert.inria.fr/fichiers/029aef5f02f7276d0d473b4a3d75b90e/CRPLAY_Gamers.zip

http://agile.csc.ncsu.edu/SEMaterials/Personas.pdf


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[29] Brewer, M. Research design and issues of validity. In Reis, H., and Judd, C. (eds.), Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology, Cambridge University Press, 3-16, Cambridge, 2000.

[30] Davis, F. D. (1989) Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13:3, 319-340.

[31] Cooper, Alan. (1999). The Inmates are running the Asylum, Macmillan.

[32]James E. Nieters, Subbarao Ivaturi, Iftikhar Ahmed. (2007). Making Personas Memorable, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, San Jose, CA, US, pp.1817-1824.

[33] Yuri Samoilov "Protrait of a Man ". Online image. Flickr. Feb 2014.

[34] Yuri Samoilov "Protrait of a Man in natural light". Online image. Flickr. Feb 2014.

[35] Jason Travis "Protrait of a woman". Online image. Flickr. Feb 2014.

Glossary

For the purposes of this document, the following definitions apply. Context of use The users, tasks, equipment (hardware, software and materials), and the physical and social environments in which a product is used [ISO 9241-11:1998] The physical environment includes the workplace design (furniture, posture and location) and the visual, auditory, thermal and atmospheric conditions, and any health and safety hazards. The social environment includes social and organizational issues including the work organization and structure, availability of assistance and interruptions, presence of other people, job design and autonomy. Requirements Expression of a perceived need that something be accomplished or realized [ISO/IEC FCD 25030] User The person who interacts with the product [ISO 9241-11:1998] User group Subset of intended users that are differentiated from other intended users by factors such as age, culture, knowledge, skill, expertise, role or responsibility that is likely to influence usability. This may include current users, potential users, users with disabilities, expected future users, users of the task output, and staff who support or maintain the product. Scenarios of use How users carry out their tasks in a specified context. Stakeholder A party having a right, share or claim in a system or in its possession of characteristics that meet that party’s needs and expectations [ISO 15288:2002]


45

Goal An intended outcome. [ISO 9241-11:1998] Task The activities required to achieve a goal. These activities can be physical or cognitive. Job responsibilities can determine goals and tasks. [ISO 9241-11:1998] Usability The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. [ISO 9241-11:1998] Effectiveness The accuracy and completeness with which users achieve specified goals [ISO 9241-11:1998] Efficiency The resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve goals [ISO 9241-11:1998]


46

Annexes

Interview schedules

Directly affected stakeholders by CR-PLAY (e.g. Game Designer, Art Director, 3D Artist)

(Part A) Introduction (approx. 5 min) Give a brief description of CR-PLAY and clearly state to the interviewee the purpose of the interview which is to gather information related to the validation goals as described previously. It is supposed that the materials that have been produced during Phase A (e.g. the technical presentation and the representative usage scenario) have been presented to the interviewee’s. (Part B) Discussion themes (approx. 90min)

Initial profiling (approx. 15 min)

Question Hints for the interviewer

1. Could you please tell us about your position in your company?

2. Please describe the current workflow/pipeline you are applying regarding content creation for video games?

3. Which are the distinct human roles and responsibilities of the aforementioned workflow?

4. Which tools are you currently using and which certain functionalities you define as the most useful?

5. Can you please identify any problems/issues with the procedures you are currently following?

6. Please describe one representative video game of your company.

The purpose is to understand the

background of the interviewee. This will help us to understand the context of his /her

answers.

Perceived usefulness of CR-PLAY (approx. 30 min)


1. Please describe your motivation in using the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video game developments. How would CR-PLAY support your tasks and make your work more efficient and effective?

2. Which assets would be most useful to capture: a) indoor objects, b) outdoor objects, c) animated elements (fountains, moving trees, flags, moving cars etc.)? Please explain.

3. What is your main concern in combining real world with fictional assets in the video game development pipeline? Please explain.

4. Do you think that using the CR-PLAY technology would decrease video game development time (from concept to prototypes), decrease development costs and at the same time keep high content quality? Please explain.

5. Please describe what you do like most and what are

To discuss with video game development

professionals whether video game industry will be improving by using the CR-PLAY

approach and associated tools for

video games content creation.


47

your main concerns with regards to the CR-PLAY mixed content creation pipeline.

Please respond to the following statements with regards to the perceived usefulness of the CR-PLAY mixed content creation pipeline and associated tools for video game development?

PERCEIVED USEFULNESS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NA

1. Using the CR-PLAY system in my job would enable me to accomplish tasks more quickly

unlikely

likely

2. Using the CR-PLAY system would improve my job performance

unlikely

likely

3. Using the CR-PLAY system in my job would increase my productivity

unlikely

likely

4. Using the CR-PLAY system would enhance my effectiveness on the job

unlikely

likely

5. Using the CR-PLAY system would make it easier to do my job

unlikely

likely

6. I would find CR-PLAY system useful in my job

unlikely

likely

7. I consider the following feature as an important improvement with regards to the current state of the art in content creation of video games.

"Providing guided capture for extended scenarios in such a way that users can comfortably capture various image/video based scenes in 3D without having to worry about missing data."

unlikely likely

8. I consider the following feature as an important improvement with regards to the current state of the art in content

unlikely likely


48

creation of video games.

“Supporting a sophisticated reconstruction process aiming to increase the overall visual appearance of the captured data and supporting a dynamic light modelling."


"Integrating the produced outcomes and interoperability (connectivity) with well established games engines for intuitive use and combine real with fictional assets in video game development."

unlikely likely

Perceived usefulness items - Based on [30]

Perceived easy of use of CR-PLAY (approx. 20 min)


1. Would you find it easy to integrate the CR-PLAY technology within your current practices/workflows/tools and processes in content creation? Do you believe that CR-PLAY would it affect your current collaboration with various team members? Please explain.

2. Please describe your main concerns with regards to the capturing activity as described (initializing, capturing, guidance, post processing steps, preferred output).

3. Please describe your main concerns with regards to the reconstruction activity (import of captured assets, predefine resolution of reconstruction, preferred output) as described? Please explain.

4. Please describe your main concerns with regards to the play activity as described? Please explain.

Perceived ease of use refers to the level of the perceived easiness, the representative user feel

in using the CR-PLAY tools as described in the usage scenario that has been produced (in Phase

A).

Please respond to the following statements with regards to the perceived easy of use of the CR-PLAY mixed content creation pipeline

PERCEIVED EASE OF USE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NA


49

1. Learning to operate the CR-PLAY system would be easy for me

unlikely

likely

2. I would find it easy to get the CR-PLAY system to do what I want it to do

unlikely

likely

3. My interaction with the CR-PLAY system would be clear and understandable

unlikely

likely

4. I would find the CR-PLAY system to be flexible to interact with

unlikely

likely

5. It would be easy for me to become skillful at using the CR-PLAY system

unlikely

likely

6. I would find the CR-PLAY system easy to use

unlikely

likely

Perceived easy of use items - Based on [30]

Completeness of functional requirements of CR-PLAY (approx. 20 min)


Capture

1. If you could make one significant change or addition with regards to the requirements of the capturing tool what would it be?

Reconstruct

2. If you could make one significant change or addition with regards to the requirements of the reconstruction activity what would it be?

Play

3. If you could make one significant change or addition with regards to the requirements of the play activity what change would it be?

Mixed Content Creation Pipeline

1. Do you have any interoperability, data or performance requirements with which the CR-PLAY tools should be compatible with?

2. Describe your idea of a CR-PLAY product or service that

The purpose is to discuss with actual

users of the CR-PLAY tools the completeness

of the proposed functionalities and

workflows.


50

would be “perfect” for your job activities. Describe it independent of cost and what is realistic today.

Interview Schedule – Stakeholders directly affected by the CR-PLAY tools

Indirectly affected stakeholders by CR-PLAY (e.g. Producer, Game Developer)

(Part A) Introduction (approx. 5 min) Give a brief description of CR-PLAY and clearly state to the interviewee the purpose of the interview which is to gather information related to the validation goals as described previously. It is supposed that the materials that have been produced during Phase A (e.g. the technical presentation and the representative usage scenario) have been presented to the interviewee’s. (Part B) Discussion themes (approx. 60min)

Initial profiling (approx. 15 min)


1. Could you please tell us about your position in your company?

2. Please describe the current workflow/pipeline you are applying within regarding content creation for video games?

3. Which are the distinct human roles and responsibilities of the aforementioned workflow?

4. Which tools are you currently using and which certain functionalities you define as the most useful?

5. Can you identify any problems/issues with the procedures you are currently following?

6. Please describe one representative video game of your company.

The purpose is to understand the

background of the interviewee. This will help us to understand

the context of his answers.

Perceived usefulness of CR-PLAY (approx. 30 min)


1. Please describe your motivation in adopting the CR-PLAY mixed pipeline for video game developments. How would CR-PLAY support you in making your work more efficient and effective?

2. Which assets would be most useful to capture: a) indoor objects, b) outdoor objects, c) animated elements (fountains, moving trees, flags, moving cars etc.)? Please explain.

3. What is your main concern in combining real world with fictional assets in the video game development pipeline? Please explain.

4. Do you think that using the CR-PLAY technology would decrease video game development time (from concept to prototypes), decrease development costs and at the same time keep high content quality? Please explain.

5. Please describe what you do like most and what are

To discuss with video game development professionals their

thoughts whether the video game industry will be improving by using the CR-PLAY

approach and technology for video

game content creation.


51

your main concerns with regards to the CR-PLAY mixed content creation pipeline.

Please respond to the following statements with regards to the perceived usefulness of the CR-PLAY mixed content creation pipeline and associated tools for video game development?

PERCEIVED USEFULNESS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NA

1. Using the CR-PLAY system in my job would enable me to accomplish tasks more quickly

unlikely

likely

2. Using the CR-PLAY system would improve my job performance

unlikely

likely

3. Using the CR-PLAY system in my job would increase my productivity

unlikely

likely

4. Using the CR-PLAY system would enhance my effectiveness on the job

unlikely

likely

5. Using the CR-PLAY system would make it easier to do my job

unlikely

likely


"Providing guided capture for extended scenarios in such a way that users can comfortably capture various image/video based scenes in 3D without having to worry about missing data."

unlikely likely


“Supporting a sophisticated reconstruction process aiming

unlikely likely


52

to increase the overall visual appearance of the captured data and supporting a dynamic light modelling."


"Integrating the produced outcomes and interoperability (connectivity) with well established games engines for intuitive use and combine real with fictional assets in video game development."

unlikely likely

Perceived usefulness items - Based on [30]

Impact on business objectives (approx. 25 min)


1. How would the CR-PLAY system support you in improving your business and achieving your goals? Please provide examples.

2. Will the deployment of the CR-PLAY tools result in organizational changes in your current working pipeline? If yes, please describe them.

3. Would you recommend the provided CR-PLAY tools to other game developers? Please explain why.

4. Do you believe that the CR-PLAY approach has potential to create a break-through in the video game development industry providing the tools to create more creative video games? Please explain.

5. Describe your idea of a CR-PLAY product or service that would be “perfect” for your business. Describe it independent of cost and what is realistic today.

To discuss with video game development professionals their

thoughts the impact on their business objectives when using the CR-PLAY

approach and technology for content

creation.

Interview Schedule – Stakeholders indirectly affected by the CR-PLAY tools

Participants demographics

Game developer

company

Participants role Participants working experience (in years)

Participants age (in years)

Participants

gender


53

Testaluna Game Designer 7 32 Male

Testaluna Game Programmer 8 31 Male

Testaluna 3D Artist 20 42 Male

SoFar Producer 20 42 Male

SoFar Game Programmer 7 49 Male

SoFar 3D Artist 2 26 Female

SoFar 3D Artist 3 28 Female

SoFar Game Programmer 20 42 Male

GameLab Game Designer 4 30 Female

GameLab Game Programmer 4 38 Male

NitroGames 3D Artist 4 23 Male

NitroGames Producer 8 32 Male

NitroGames Game Designer 4 27 Male

HeadNought Game Designer 3 31 Male

SpaceProofGames Game Designer 6 37 Male

SkyrockGames Game Designer 5 34 Male

BlackLanGames 3D Artist 3 24 Male

Documents

Deliverable 4 - CR-PLAY · 2014. 10. 15. · CR-PLAY Project no. 661089 Deliverable 4.1 End-user Requirements Analysis 3 5 Miniclip UK Limited MC UK 6 University of Patras UPAT Greece