AshtonTran

Subject

Technical knowledge on game development processes, generative AI integration, and game analytics

MLA citations

Yeung, Tim, et al. “Mapping Practices of Academic Game Development.” Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, ACM, Apr. 2025, pp. 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1145/3723498.3723799.

Ternar, Dan-Alexandru, et al. “Generative AI in Game Development: A Qualitative Research Synthesis.” Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Apr. 2026, pp. 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791206.

Calvo-Morata, Antonio, et al. “Learning Analytics to Guide Serious Game Development: A Case Study Using Articoding.” Computers, vol. 14, no. 4, MDPI AG, Mar. 2025, p. 122, https://doi.org/10.3390/computers14040122. Accessed 26 Aug. 2026.

Assessment

After doing extensive research I now have more knowledge in the field of video game development as a career. I will detail each source and explain my findings and takeaways. In Mapping Practices of Academic Game Development by Yeung, Tim, et al. I learned that game development faces many challenges in the context of game development that are caused not just because of differences in languages. For instance there are many instances of an imbalance of stakes which could cause many developers to take game development more or less seriously than others. This could cause the actual result of the game to be completely, or at least slightly, different than the expected result. This could also happen because a lack of video game experience by the developers themselves could hinder them from communicating their needs and ideas during the development process. Additionally, I learned that researchers have been reported to have a lack of video game knowledge which hinders the actual developers’ ability to create a game that is congruent with the actual expected and desired result. This affects my independent study because I now know a little bit about how academic game development works, how its practices could sometimes go wrong, and how one’s lack of video game experience as a whole could impact video game development. This helps me to conceptualize team building in video game development, allowing me to think of possible team workflows. Additionally, I can now begin to draft and build my own indie game workflow that allows me to cover all the topics and practices that the team was able to do. I need to do more research on how actual corporate game designers work because I feel like their workflows will be more optimized and professional. This has given me more interest in my topic because I have more insight into how I should work as an indie developer.

Secondly, in Generative AI in Game Development: A Qualitative Research Synthesis by Ternar, Dan-Alexandru, et al. I learned that Generative AI can be used in small video game development teams in a multitude of ways. For instance, they used AI as an additional teammate to aid in their development but found that their responses required constant verification and oversight in order to be effective. Similarly, in a classroom setting it was found that these Generative AI were not very effective and were often very flawed and buggy which cut into the students’ actual development time as they were focusing more on fixing bugs and getting the actual output that they wanted instead of the AI integrating smoothly into the development process. In larger teams, it was found that AI-generated assets were just as time consuming to manage as traditional assets showing a massive limitation in a field that I thought would be the most time consuming. Some typical use cases for Generative AI are asset generation, ideation, and programming but could lead to a loss in the sense of authorship since the AI seems to be doing most of the work. Despite this, the use of AI was seen to allow for an increased rate at which the iteration of a game could happen. This is really important because it allows developers to test mechanics, implement more content, and reduce bugs much faster and more efficiently. This has affected my independent study by helping me to realize how I could implement AI into creating my own game but also how maybe I would want to limit my usage of it because I would like to retain my complete authorship of it and I do feel that same loss of authorship whenever I use AI to do anything really. This has led me to probably reduce my research on generative AI but also learn more about how to get to the iterative phase of game development. This has increased my interest in my topic and career because I believe AI is the future and by learning this information I now know how to implement this into my development process.

Finally, in Learning Analytics to Guide Serious Game Development: A Case Study Using Articoding by Calvo-Morata, Antonio, et al. they used a post-game experience form in order to measure the opinions between the different genders that played their game. Additionally, they tracked idle times among players to determine if their game is engaging enough for the player (long idle times mean that the player isn’t engaged enough). This affects my independent study by allowing me to have the knowledge to track how my game is performing and what the traditional measures for engagement are, which are typically hard to come by as most games resort to using post-game surveys instead of tracking real in-game stats. I will still need to research how different players respond to different mechanics and game styles. I am now more interested in this career because I now know how to measure my game’s impact and success.

MLA citation

Arnoldi, Nigel, et al. Implementation of Pathfinding on NPC Using a* Algorithm Into Game Platformer Application. 5409943, 2025. SSRN, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5409943. Accessed 10 Sept. 2026.

Assessment

In the source Implementation of Pathfinding on NPC Using a* Algorithm into Game Platformer Application I learned about the importance that NPC’s hold in video games as a whole and why they are implemented. For instance, Nigel states that NPC’s are implemented to make video games more challenging, interactive, and to enhance overall gameplay. When I play video games, I’ve always been fascinated with NPC and how they work and act almost human. Additionally, I learned that NPC’s have different behavioral patterns, such as their awareness, decision making, and changing visual states. This is similar to my experience playing megaman where the bosses have different patterns in their attack which allow the player to read their movements and deal damage. I found this super cool because it made it feel like a puzzle while also engaging me as I went on with the fight and new attacks were unlocked. This is really important because with this new found knowledge I now know that there are different patterns in NPC AI simplest forms meaning that by diving deeper and tightening the microscope I can begin to conceptualize how to implement this myself. Moreover, I also learned how important NPCs are in game which is important because I know where to implement NPCs into my game and what their purpose should be so that their implementation can be purposeful. In this source I also learned that NPCs use nodes to determine what their next path would be. Nodes are basically like waypoints that appear within a path in which the NPC goes to and then calculates more waypoints and continues on that way. I have experience with them in one of my games but it wasn’t as functional as I wanted it to be. By learning more in depth about the inner workings of the algorithms however, I can learn more about how NPC AI works and how to troubleshoot, make changes and to make it more effective. This is important because, by learning more about the inner workings of this system, pathfinding can become much easier for me to implement more effectively and improve and enhance my gameplay. One more thing that I learned is the actual algorithm behind the pathfinding system. This algorithm takes into account waypoints, and travel costs. Essentially pathfinding is a system that tries to get an NPC to travel to a certain point in the least amount of distance while also being able to evade different obstacles. This system is pivotal to realistic AI and good NPCs because in games, the landscape is almost never just a flat plane with no obstacles or variations in height. If you were to implement pathfinding by just making the NPC always move towards that random part, they will eventually get snagged onto an obstacle which will impede travel and make the video game seem less engaging. This could be seen in many games where you can escape an enemy by simply jumping up to a higher plane, or losing them in a maze. This is important because with this algorithm I can learn how to implement AI into my game so that my NPCs react and act more realistically and can actually engage the player in a fun manner.

MLA citation

Ahmad, Sanjib Bashir, and Siti Azreena Binti Mubin. “A Comparative Study of AI Tools and Techniques for Assisting Solo Artists and Programmers in Developing Video Games From Scratch.” Immersive Media and User Experience, vol. 2, 9 June 2026, pp. 23–40, https://www.jimmux.com/index.php/imue/article/view/16, 10.65638/2978-8811.2026.2.04. Accessed 14 Sept. 2026.

Assessment

In this comparative study, I looked at the various results that were displayed in the paper. One finding was that AI, although there are disputes for originality and ethicality, can still help to promote creativity and help developers to actually finish their games. Finishing games has always been a huge problem for me. My coding skills are often my strongest suit, but when it comes to creating assets, graphics, VFX, and sound design, my skills are lacking. Given a very short time span, I struggle with creating both functional and appealing games. With this finding, I now have a different perspective on AI usage in video games, and also how implementing this into my workflow can streamline my process in actually finishing and releasing a good game. Moreover, I also learned that AI can be used to complete repetitive tasks and is less reliable for more core creative activities. This is important since this usage of AI actually streamlines the process instead of fully taking over. This way, I feel full ownership of my game while also making the process more bearable and efficient, since repetitive tasks can be draining and time-consuming. With AI usage, I can just automate these tasks, saving myself for more pivotal tasks that actually require my thinking and decision making. This is important because I’ve heard of this phenomenon called decision fatigue, where the more decisions you make, the more “decision fatigue” you accumulate. The theory is that if you rid yourself of smaller decisions that add up, you can make better decisions on bigger things that actually matter. This applies to game development because if I rid myself of making smaller decisions and spending my energy on these small tasks that can easily be automated, I can make better decisions that can actually clearly impact the direction and success of my game. Furthermore, I’ve had some interest in open-world MMO RPG games, where the player gets to play in this almost sandbox game, giving them many forms of autonomy like what armor they wear, what weapons they use, who they talk to, etc. These aspects fascinate me greatly, and I would love to learn more about the process that goes into creating these games and also how they come up with stories. Luckily, in this source I was able to accumulate some information about how AI can be used to come up with these stories, creating content-rich games. This fascinated me since I have very little expertise in both level design and storytelling. With this new information, I can use AI to make my imagination come to life with stories that actually encapsulate what I am envisioning without spending all that time in development writing things manually that won’t be as well planned or worded in comparison to how AI could. In addition, I learned how AI can help indie game developers work on the same level playing field as AAA games if used correctly and with a good setup. Finally, I learned that popular use cases for AI include NPC AI, which I’ve done some research on already; dynamic game difficulty, which I’ve always wondered about; and an evolving storyline, which I’ve never heard about but I plan on doing more research on this if possible too.

Subject

Indie game advertisement

MLA citation

Schymanski, Justin. The Effect of Pay-For-Advantage Monetization Systems 1 The Effect of Pay-For-Advantage Monetization in Video Games on Consumer Behavior. 2026, https://campus.kennesaw.edu/colleges-departments/coles/centers/markets-economic-opportunity/docs/j-schymanski.pdf. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.

Assessment

This article looks at how video games make money and how players react to it. The author focuses on something called “pay-for-advantage,” which is when a game allows players to spend real money to gain an edge over others. This can include buying stronger items, skipping parts of the game that take a long time, or unlocking abilities that other players have to earn. The main goal of the study was to find out whether games that use this system lose players and whether players view these games more negatively. To answer this question, the author studied a large group of games on Steam. He gave each game a score based on how much pay-for-advantage content it had. Games that only sold cosmetic items, such as skins, scored low, while games that let players directly buy power scored high. He then compared these scores to how many people continued playing each game and how positive the reviews were over time. The results were not exactly what most people would expect. The article shows that games with more pay-for-advantage content received worse reviews, and those reviews became even more negative as time went on. However, the number of players did not always go down. Among games that already had some kind of microtransactions, the ones with more pay-for-advantage actually kept their players slightly better. This means that even though players complain about these systems, many of them continue to play. This is important because it shows a difference between what players say and what they actually do. Many people leave negative reviews and claim to dislike microtransactions, but they still stay with the game. The author suggests that there may be different groups of players. Some prefer to buy a game once and be finished, while others are willing to spend extra money in order to keep up with everyone else. I can apply this to my own experience because I play games that use these systems. There have been times when I lost to another player because they paid for an advantage, and I was frustrated by it. Even so, I kept playing the game. After reading this article, I realized that players like me are part of the reason companies continue to use pay-for-advantage. If players truly stopped playing, companies would have to change their approach, but since most people do not, there is little reason for them to stop. The author also points out several limitations in his study. He only looked at games on Steam, so console games were not included. His scoring system also treated every type of purchase as equal, even though a cosmetic item and a powerful weapon has a very different effect on the game. In addition, most of the games in the study had no microtransactions at all, which may have affected the results. Overall, this article was informative and relevant to my own life. The idea that players dislike pay-for-advantage but continue playing anyway helps explain why the system is so common, it is something I will pay more attention to in the future. This article made me think about the way games are made in a way that is different than the way I thought about the way games are made before.

Reflection

Professional Symposium was a great opportunity for me and I had a very good experience. My expectations for this event were relatively moderate I felt like it was a interesting concept but acknowledged that the professionals there probably won’t be specializing in my topic of game development. However, meeting these new people and learning about their field made me realize how even if their specialties don’t algin with mine, there are still many similarities among all the topics. Throughout all the events I was able to learn how to communicate more effectively, and work on my networking skills.

Firstly, we had open networking. This part of the event was honestly my least favorite because I was still waking up as we had to wake up really early, and I find it hard to approach random people and talk to them. Most of the time I had to jump in with friends from my ISM and that helped me to loosen up and talk to professionals more. At the end however, I was able to talk to this nice woman about my topic, game development, and I felt like I had loosened up by then and I felt like i learned many new things. Overall, despite this part being my least favorite I still recognize how valuable it was in this experience overall and I now see how weak my communication skills are. I was really glad that I could group with my friends to talk with professionals because that allowed me to get the most out of this experience instead of being too shy to actually talk to anyone.

Secondly, we went to the ISM panel and met these professionals and they were able to talk about their experiences in real life and how ISM had contributed to their success in their field. This was a great part for me because I didn’t have to talk very much and I enjoyed hearing about the panel’s experiences and real-life application of ISM. I also was able to take away the things that I should take advantage of as being apart as ISM. Overall this part of the professional symposium was one of my favorites. The speakers had very good responses and I learned many new things.

Thirdly, we went to get interviewed 2 professions. The first professional I interviewed was a banker and gave me advice on how experience and having good networking skills will always outclass simply being able to do the job. He stated that being able to do the job is a given, but to retain that job and to actually move up in position you must be outgoing and network. In my second interview, the woman helped me figure out how to get past my struggles with not finishing game development by telling me that working in groups always helps with motivation but can be challenging if we don’t have similar visons.

Fourth, we went to three presentations. One was for branding, the other was professional communication, and the last for original work. This was a a great time because I was able to ask questions, listen to experienced individuals and actually know what to do in this class. Then we went into this classroom to talk to these 3 other professionals which was also a good time because they were talking about AI which is something that is really relevant to my topic and the time right now and also I got to learn a lot about the importance of networking even after you get the job. Finally, student networking, I met a girl who was in cybersecurity and I referred her to Pratham since he did cybersecurity last year, and I also met many other people and they got to talk a lot about their topics and how they are doing in ISM in general.

Throughout this year I’ve conducted two interviews with two different video game professionals and professors. I sent over 13 cold emails to professors, professionals, and even YouTubers because I believed that I would struggle to not only get a mentor but get any responses at all. However, I actually got about 5 responses, but sadly many of them cancelled or ghosted me. The first interview that I conducted was with Ian Schreiber, who is a massive influence in the world of video games. He cofounded the Global Game Jam, which is one of the largest game jams in the world; authored various textbooks like Game Balance and Challenges for Game Designers; and published Ara: History Untold and Marvel Trading Card Game. Due to all of these achievements, I went into this interview very nervously. I was delightfully surprised that he was responsive to my emails and my text messages. The interview went very well; he was very polite, and I was doing my best to stay professional as well. Overall, I learned many new things about rapid prototyping, game balance, and more about game design and what I should focus on. This interview was great, and I am very happy with how it went. At the end, however, I did mess up when asking him to be my mentor. I believe I asked a little abruptly, and I worded it very awkwardly because I was nervous. Despite this, he still accepted and stated that he does mentorships all the time, which was a big relief for me. So with this interview I not only gained more knowledge about game development but also an actual mentor who will help me throughout this year.

The second interview that I conducted was with Noah Wardrip-Fruin, who is a professor. The interview had to be postponed because I had a DECA meeting on that day, but whenever we were able to actually conduct the interview, it was very intriguing. He was a very nice man and answered all of my questions very well. One thing that I wished was a little better is that I wish I had asked for more in-depth answers, because I felt like we had a lot of awkward silences where he was done talking while I was thinking of what to ask, and I also expected him to talk for slightly longer. This interview taught me about how he goes about creating video games and also how he was able to develop, with a team, his game called Game-O-Matic, which was very intriguing to me because when researching him I stumbled across that game. This game was a spectacle to me because normally whenever I play games I am able to think about how the features were implemented and how I could implement them myself. When playing this game I was very confused because I had no idea how I would go about this, especially given that this was developed before AI was mainstream. I ensured that I asked him about it, and he gave a very detailed explanation bout it that I can’t encapsulate in such a small research report. Overall, this interview was a great way for me to work on my professional communication skills and learn more about my field. Sadly, he didn’t give me any contact information but did tell me to email him if I need any advice or help on my projects.

Subject

How digital game-based learning affects student learning outcomes

MLA citation

Barz, Nathalie, et al. “The Effect of Digital Game-Based Learning Interventions on Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Affective-Motivational Learning Outcomes in School: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research, vol. 94, no. 2, 2024, pp. 193-227, https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231167795.

Assessment

For my research on video games and learning, I read a meta-analysis by Nathalie Barz, Manuela Benick, Laura Dörrenbächer-Ulrich, and Franziska Perels, researchers at Saarland University in Germany, published in the Review of Educational Research in 2024. A meta-analysis does not run one new experiment. Instead, it gathers many earlier studies and combines their results so the overall pattern is easier to see. The researchers pointed out that older meta-analyses on digital game-based learning covered a huge range of years and mixed together very different groups of learners, which made it hard to say what games actually do for students in a normal school. To fix that, they only looked at studies done in schools and published between 2015 and 2020, and they compared game-based lessons to traditional instruction. They also split learning into three kinds of outcomes: cognitive, which is what students know and can do, metacognitive, which is how well they plan and check their own learning, and affective-motivational, which is how they feel about the subject and how motivated they are. Their main finding was that game-based learning had a medium positive effect on learning overall (g = .54) and an even stronger effect on cognitive outcomes (g = .67), but only a small effect on motivation (g = .32) and no significant effect on metacognition (Barz et al. 193). None of the personal, environmental, or confounding factors they tested changed the results in a meaningful way. The part that surprised me most was that games helped knowledge more than motivation. I expected the opposite, since the usual argument for educational games is that they make students want to learn. This study suggests that the real strength of a good learning game is not that it feels fun, but that the practice inside it actually works. That changes how I think about my own project, an SAT practice game set in a samurai world where the SAT skills are the game mechanics, such as reading a scroll to find its main idea or working out the slope needed to intercept a thrown knife. If motivation gains are small, I cannot count on the theme alone to keep students playing, so every fight and quest needs to be real practice with question wording close to the actual test. The missing effect on metacognition is useful too. Games do not seem to teach students to think about their own thinking automatically, so I could build that in on purpose, for example by having the samurai’s inner monologue ask the player to explain why one method fits a problem better than another. For education more broadly, the results support schools using well-designed games as a regular part of instruction rather than a reward at the end of class, since across many real classrooms they produced better learning than traditional methods. At the same time, schools and game designers should not assume that adding a game will automatically fix low motivation or teach study skills. Those goals still need deliberate design, and that is the main lesson I am taking into my own game.