Implementation and Evaluation of Selfish - a Social Game for MOOSES

Abstract

Cinemas have started the transition from analogue to digital hi resolution movie projectors. This creates opportunities to use the cinemas, and already existing infrastructure, to other purpose than movies. One such example is computer games. Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Tellu AS have developed a framework for playing games on one big screen, just like the cinemas have, called Multiplayer On One Screen Entertainment System (MOOSES). In this project there has been developed a game for MOOSES, based on Microsoft s XNA framework. When developing games for MOOSES there are some topics within the area of computer games that are important to be aware of. One such topic is that the players can see all the information on the screen, and thus the screen should not contain information that the other players should not have access to. There are also some areas where a normal computer game contain topics that is not important on a single screen, such as 3D graphics. The game that was developed was called Selfish, and is about a fish in an aquarium setting. Each player controls one fish, and tries to get the highest score by eating smaller fish controlled by other players. There were also conducted three user tests, at different geographical locations. In these tests the players played both Selfish and Slagmark (which is another game specially developed for MOOSES). After the user tests were done the player filled out a questionnaire. The questionnaires were then analyzed. The results from the questionnaires gave indications that the higher number of players that played together, the more both games ( Selfish and Slagmark) were liked by the players. Also most of the players were interested in replacing commercials, showed at the cinema before the movie, with games.