Entertainment computing: Inaugural Editorial

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2009.10.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Entertainment computing is on its way getting an established research arena in industry and academia as well. To bring all the different contributing research communities together shared resources (e.g. email distribution list, conference series, and journals), organizational structures (e.g. special interests groups, technical committees, etc.) and unifying ideas are helpful. One unifying idea in this diverse community of entertainment researchers and developers might be a normative position to enhance human living through social transformation by entertainment technology.

Introduction

The advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has enabled broad use of ICT and facilitated the use of ICT in the private and personal domain. ICT related industries are directing their business targets to home applications. Among these applications, entertainment will differentiate ICT applications in the private and personal market from the office. Comprehensive research and development on ICT applications for entertainment will be of utmost importance for the promotion of ICT use in the home and other places for leisure. So far engineering research and development on entertainment has never been really established on large scale in academic communities. On the other hand entertainment related industries such as video and computer game industries have been growing rapidly in the past, and today the entertainment computing business does outperform the turnover of the movie industry. For example, entertainment robots are drawing attention of young people; the event called Robo-Cup has been increasing the number of participants year by year. Entertainment technologies cover a broad range of products and services: movie, music, television TV (including upcoming interactive TV), video player, voice on demand VOD (including music on demand), computer game, game console, arcade, gambling machine, internet (e.g. chat room, board and card games, multi-user dungeon MUD), intelligent toy, edutainment, simulation, sport, theme parks, virtual reality, and upcoming service robots.

The field of entertainment computing focuses on users’ growing use of entertainment technologies at work, in school and at home, and the impact of this technology on their behaviour. Nearly every working and living place has computers, and the great majority of children in industrialized countries have computers in their homes as well. All of us would probably agree that children need to become competent users to be prepared for life and work in the future. Especially children’s increasing use of entertainment technologies brings with it both the risk of possible harm [1] and the promise of enriched learning, well-being and positive development [58].

The scope of the research and development arena ‘entertainment computing’ is obviously quite broad: computer, video, console and internet games; digital new media for entertainment; entertainment robots; entertainment technology, applications, application program interfaces, and entertainment system architectures; human factors of entertainment technology; impact of entertainment technology on users and society; integration of interaction and multimedia capabilities in entertainment systems; interactive television and broadcasting; methodologies, paradigms, tools, and software/hardware architectures for supporting entertainment applications; new genres of entertainment technology; simulation/gaming methodologies used in education, training, and research. A remaining question is how to bring these diverse communities together based on shared and hopefully unifying ideas? In [40], [43], [42], [61], [62] we started to sketch the scene.

Section snippets

Entertainment computing and the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)

To address and bring up this new area of entertainment technologies it is important to build a good relationship among researchers and between academia and industries. Takahiko Kamae (Japan) initiated setting up a task force group for entertainment computing. The activities of this task force group had as a first and important result that in August 2000 the General Assembly of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and their Committee for Cooperation with Industries

How can social transformation be achieved?

One important kind of social transformation relates to decisions about the use of ICTs in the design, production, consumption, and ownership of news, information, and entertainment media [12]. Van Loon [31] relates an analysis of risk arising from electronic media to that of a transformation in the societal organization of aesthetic experience. His central assumption is “that particular risks cannot be understood independently from the media by which they have been generated” (p. 166). The sets

A new framework for entertainment computing

Human activities in the context of entertainment experiences can be categorized into two major classes:

  • Passive experiences: Reading novels, watching movies; people watch experiences of others, etc.; sometimes called ‘lean back’ entertainment.

  • Active experiences: Doing sports, creating art; people are active participants in the dynamic situation (e.g. [47]); sometimes called ‘lean forward’ entertainment.

Passive and active experiences are the two poles of the ‘activity’ dimension. Active

Future directions

Over the last decades the rapid innovation in ICT has offered ever faster and more versatile access to ever more data, knowledge and information. Although this is of much practical value, the transformative social power of the technology is based on its opening and closing of opportunities for us to have control over shaping and reshaping our electronic and physical access and the terms of access to the knowledge and other resources we need to enable us to earn a living, learn, engage in

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) to accept our proposal for setting up the Technical Committee on Entertainment Computing (TC14). We are also very grateful to all countries having their national representative nominated for this TC14.

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