Northeastern’s researchers are advancing the current state of game design by drawing on multiple disciplines to develop models and examine aspects of digital social and single-player games designed for purposes such as health, education, and entertainment. They are also focused on the emerging research areas of human– computer interaction and game design innovation. This research involves studying user interactions with games, exploring techniques to improve the mechanics of game design, and investigating the impact of procedural content generation on game design. For more information about the combined Computer Science and Game Design program, please click here.
Members of the research group are developing methods to measure user engagement with games; exploring how games can be used to improve health; designing more dynamic, adaptive games that consider narrative and mimic oral storytelling; and using games to enable more natural communication for children with and without speech impairments.
Team Achievements
- Collaborated with industry to build a virtual-world platform for women over age 30 to encourage better health habits.
- Created tools and methods to enhance the game user experience.
- Serving on the advisory board of the Game User Research Special Interest Group of the International Game Developers Association and chairing of the 2012 Foundations of Digital Games conference.
- Serving as associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Computers in Entertainment, and the International Journal on Entertainment Computing
- Served as lead designer for Endless Web, an experimental game that tightly integrates procedural content generation into both game mechanics and aesthetics
