GameDNA: Towards game notation for discourse and player actions

Abstract

In the current game practice there is a need for richer game grammars or ways of notation. Existing methods are not sufficiently able to accommodate the players’ mental states and actions during the game; we need better ways to visualize cognitive aspects within the player and the game events. In this project a Serious Game Studio, a Computer Science department and an HRD consultancy firm cooperate on a living case-study, a serious game to measure “Compliance” for job assessment in order to uncover individual traits (here: Compliance) in a structural manner. This paper describes the first concepts and progress of GameDNA (Game Discourse Notation and Analysis), a method to notate, analyze and visualize cognitive actions of players and interactive aspects during play.