Community Research and Development Information Service - CORDIS

PlayMancer will implement a new Serious Game environment, by augmenting existing 3D gaming engines with new possibilities. The objectives of the project are four-fold:
1. to construct a next generation networked gaming environment, mainly augmenting the gaming experience with innovative ICT modes of interaction between the player and the game world,
2. to allow for a shorter and most cost-effective game production chain, by enabling techniques for procedural content creation based on generative modelling, and thus reduce the cost of offering a full-fledged pre-designed gaming world,
3. to evolve the principles of Universally Accessible Games for application into 3D-based games, following a design for all philosophy, with the ultimate goal of designing games to be equally challenging to players of different abilities,
4. to evaluate the proposed framework and gaming infrastructure by developing and testing a series of serious games modules as applied to 2 application domains: physical rehabilitation, and therapeutic support and lifestyle management programs for behavioural and addictive disorders.

User requirements from the application domains will drive development of the platform. Specifically, the focus on physical rehabilitation will drive platform requirements for supporting the development of Universally Accessible Games (UA games) and the integration of low cost player motion tracking and bio-feedback devices. Games scenarios from the lifestyle related disorder could implicate platform requirements for emotion recognition of states such as boredom, depression, anxiety and associated cognitive responses.

Due to the modular nature of the envisioned PlayMancer gaming platform architecture and the commitment to Design-for-All philosophy, the project results could be generalised to other serious games applications and user communities. PlayMancer aims to support the right of all people for equal opportunities in social game-motivated interaction.