2024 Gibbons Lecture Series

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The 2024 Gibbons Lecture Series theme is Computer gaming and esports.

eSports game design: designing for engagement

Simon McCallum

Victoria University of Wellington

One of the largest challenges for society is disengagement, with education, health care, and civil society. One of the societal challenges of AI is people allowing the AI to make decisions for them and disengaging with thinking. We need to find activities which are cognitively challenging and rewarding, we need games. Games are increasingly the leisure activity of choice in both young and old. Games are engagement engines. Understanding how to design games and how they engage players is critical for understanding how we shape activities to engage the public.

Why are games so engaging? How do we design for engagement? How are esports games designed? In this talk Simon will discuss engagement in games, what they tell us about motivation, and how game designers balance games.
Event date: Thursday 2 May 2024

Livestream: https://youtube.com/live/-dVT_qQE4CQ?feature=share

Beyond Entertainment: Serious Games for Education, Training, and Healthcare

Burkhard Wünsche

University of Auckland

Serious games are games designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. They can be effective where traditional approaches don’t work because tasks are repetitive, stressful, time-consuming, or users lack motivation.

In this talk we focus on serious games for education, training, and healthcare. We will provide an overview of the history of this field and the current state-of-the-art using as examples both commercial games and research. Along the way, we will discuss advantages, limitations, and risks of serious games and under what circumstances such games are likely to work best.

Additionally, we’ll explore how modern technologies, such as AR and VR, can help to make serious games even more effective. The talk will conclude with an exploration of emerging trends and possible future developments.

Event date: Thursday 9 May 2024

Livestream: https://youtube.com/live/VFxEEREyFgg?feature=share

Meet the people who play eSports

Panel host: Gillian Dobbie

People are attracted to sport for different reasons, e.g., their mother or aunt played the sport, or there was a teacher that inspired them at school. The panel features four people who are passionate about eSport either as players or coordinators of eSports competitions. The discussion will cover what the eSport scene looks like in Aotearoa, the games that are played, what attracted the panellists to eSports, how competitions run, and much more.

Panellists

Reagan Kelly is an active competitor within the global eSports industry, for the game Street Fighter. A representative for the national esports team, the E Blacks, Reagan placed 3rd at the Global eSports Games in Istanbul in 2022.

Varun Modi is a prolific commentator within the eSports industry of New Zealand. Varun provides the voice, storytelling and charisma to some of the highest quality eSports events within the country.

David Douglas has managed the production and organisation of the largest fighting game tournaments across New Zealand since 2011. David provides a view into the eSports industry from the standpoint of an event organiser.

Lizzie Corbett is a high-level eSports competitor within New Zealand, having placed second at the New Zealand Fighting Game Nationals in 2019 for Samurai Showdown. Lizzie offers a lens into how eSports and computer science are connected, and how they can cooperate.

Event Date: Thursday 23 May 2024

Livestream: https://youtube.com/live/aCqeEWqwn3I?feature=share

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