Felix, Tom, Claudia, Sebastian @ HaruCon

On the weekend of April 27-28th, HaruCon, Carinthea’s youth pop culture convention, took place (https://www.harucon.at/) in Klagenfurt. Felix, Tom, Claudia, Sebastian, and many Game Studies and Engineering students were present and represented GSE, TEWI, and the university. Tom and Sebastian held a workshop on how to enter the video game industry, while Felix held one for an introduction to video game analysis. The convention was an enormous success, with more than 2000 visitors over two days. Flyers, buttons, and stickers were handed out to everyone so that awareness of the university as part of Klagenfurt’s youth culture could continue to grow. How to study there, especially video games and many other burning questions were answered by our brave helpers more than a hundred times during the convention.

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Paper accepted: Towards ML-Driven Video Encoding Parameter Selection for Quality and Energy Optimization

Authors: Zoha Azimi, Reza Farahani, Vignesh V Menon, Christian Timmerer, Radu Prodan

Venue: 16th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX’24)

Abstract: As video streaming dominates Internet traffic, users constantly seek a better Quality of Experience (QoE), often resulting in increased energy consumption and a higher carbon footprint. The increasing focus on sustainability underscores the
critical need to balance energy consumption and QoE in video streaming. This paper proposes a modular architecture that refines video encoding parameters by assessing video complexity and encoding settings for the prediction of energy consumption and video quality (based on Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF)) using lightweight XGBoost models trained on the multi-dimensional video compression dataset (MVCD). We apply Explainable AI (XAI) techniques to identify the critical encoding parameters that influence the energy consumption and video quality prediction models and then tune them using a weighting strategy between energy consumption and video quality. The experimental results confirm that applying a suitable weighting factor to energy consumption in the x265 encoder results in a 46 % decrease in energy consumption, with a 4-point drop in VMAF, staying below the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) threshold.

Radu Prodan @ BARTIK100 – International Conference on Networks, Intelligence and Computing (ICONIC-2024)

Radu participated and gave a keynote talk at the ICONIC 2024. To mark the 100th Birth Anniversary of Jean Bartik, one of the original six programmers of the ENIAC Computer, LPU hosted “BARTIK100 – International Conference on Networks, Intelligence and Computing (ICONIC-2024).” The conference provided a platform for scientists, researchers, academicians, industrialists, and students to assimilate the knowledge and get the opportunity to discuss and share insights through deep-dive research findings on the recent disruptions and developments in computing.

 

Kseniia @ Women in Data Science 2024 Conference in Villach

On Thursday, 25.04.2024, Kseniia organized and participated with Marie Biedermann and Rachel Gorden (student and graduate of Game Studies and Engineering) in the Women in Data Science Villach 2024 Conference. During this event, they conducted a workshop to acquaint participants with the online interactive fiction tool Twine, guiding them in creating their initial game projects. Besides explaining the main features of Twine, they also talked about how Data Science is used in games. Additionally, they introduced the educational and knowledge dissemination potential of gamification.

 

 

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Accepted: A Tutorial on Latency- and Energy-Aware Video Coding and Delivery Streaming Systems

Authors: Reza Farahani (AAU, Austria), and Vignesh V Menon (Fraunhofer HHI, Berlin, Germany)

Venue: The 12th European Workshop on Visual Information Processing (EUVIP 2024)

08-11 September, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland

ITEC team participated at the 15th ACM MMSys in Bari, Italy

The 15th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference was held from 15-18 April, 2024 in Bari, Italy. MMSys 2024 provides a forum to leading researchers from academia and industry to present and share their latest findings in multimedia systems.

Christian Timmerer, Mathias Lux, Samira Afzal, Christian Bauer, Daniele Lorenzi, Emanuele Artioli, Mohammad Ghasempour, Shivi Vats, and Armin Lachini participated and presented ATHENA, GAIA, and SPIRIT contributions:

Within the Organizing Committee Christian Timmerer officiated as TPC Chair and Farzad Tashtarian as Proceeding Chair.

 

 

Press Start: Your Journey into Game Development

On Friday, 12 April 2024, seven representatives of the Pioneers of Game Development Austria (https://pgda.at/) visited the University of Klagenfurt for the event Press Start: Your Journey into Game Development, organised by the master’s programme Game Studies and Engineering. The PGDA members, composed of different video game developers from all over Austria, provided insightful talks, gave feedback on student game projects, and provided personal support during a mentoring café. Attracting about 50 GSE students, academic staff, senate members, and many potential new students, the event can be considered the most successful in recent GSE history.

 

Interview with Tom @Uni-News

Wenn Tom Tuček über die Welt spricht, muss er stets konkretisieren: Handelt es sich um die reale Welt oder um virtuelle Welten? Der Doktorand am Institut für Informationstechnologie beschäftigt sich aktuell mit digital humans, also virtuellen Figuren, denen wir beispielsweise in Videospielen begegnen. Tom Tuček möchte gerne wissen, wie sich der Kontakt mit digitalen Menschen, die mit neuer Künstlicher Intelligenz ausgestattet werden, auf die Spieler:innen auswirkt.

Read the whole interview here: https://www.aau.at/blog/das-spiel-mit-dem-digitalen-menschen/

 

 

 

Interview with Felix Schniz for the “World Pokémon Day”: Why the Games are Still a Hit 28 Years Later

The enduring popularity of the Pokémon franchise can be explained by a mix of nostalgia, constant innovation, and their appeal to a wide and diverse fan base, as Felix Schniz, game studies scholar and senior scientist at the University of Klagenfurt, explains: Pokémon is a pioneer of this dynamic. The game perfectly shows how a franchise can stay fresh and relevant through the ongoing reinterpretation of its genre dimensions.

Read the whole interview here: Dringel, Severin: “Tag des Pokémon – Warum Pokémon 28 Jahre später immer noch ein Renner ist.” Kleine Zeitung International, 27.02.2024. https://www.kleinezeitung.at/international/18047876/warum-pokemon-auch-nach-zwanzig-jahren-immer-noch-ein-renner-ist

 

Pokemon Ash Transparent Background PNG Image

 

 

 

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Anthology published: Fictional Practices of Spirituality I

”Fictional Practices of Spirituality” provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into (digital) worlds of fiction. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds – may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or larp, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations.

The anthology was edited by Felix Schniz and Leonardo Marcato. It is now available as a printed copy, or for download via Open Access. Published by transcript 2023.

book: Fictional Practices of Spirituality I