TL;DR: HCI research group at KU Leuven looking for game studios to provide access to live game logs for 2 Master theses, or even collaborate with our group around data visualisation for streaming research

Every year our HCI research group defines a number of Master thesis topics for Computer Science and Engineering students. Our topics include data visualisation, recommender systems, augmented reality, learning analytics, and e-health.

As my expertise is data visualisation, and video games have always held a special place in my heart, it only made sense to merge the two. That’s why this year we have two Master students working on  “Designing live data visualisations for the new spectator sport: video games”.

The general idea is to use live (interactive) visualisations during a game to help a specific audience get a better understanding of and new insights in what is going on. Some examples:

• help people who are new to the game to get a better understanding of the game
• assist the streamer in informing their audience better
• help the streamer’s fans get more insights into their specific idol’s activities
• facilitate a better overview to assist commentators

… anything goes, but we’ll be narrowing it down ASAP, as both theses must be finished by June 2018 ;)

For this topic my students require access to activity logs of a game, preferably during live play. The availability and type of data will play a big part in the choice of game (type) and target audience of the visualisation.

So what we need is a game studio (big or small) that is developing a game with Twitch/e-sports in mind, or a studio that has an established game with e-sports/twitch popularity. What we want from you is access to detailed game logs or an API, for science!

If you think you could help in any way, let us know! We can work independently, sharing our research results in a way that can help you, or we can even look for official collaboration options (we could even apply for funding, certainly if you have offices in Belgium), within and beyond the scope of these theses (this might actually be very interesting for small Flemish indie studios because of government funding possibilities).

Interested? Want to know more? Shoot me an email, or leave a comment below!

In case you wish to learn more about us, read on.

A  Master thesis at the Human-Computer Interaction group.
Our process is that of design-based research, iteratively designing prototypes with a heavy focus on the user, involving them in the design process and the evaluations. The result should be a fully working prototype that has been proven to be an added value to the target audience, by being usable, useful, and generating meaningful insights. The student also writes a 50-70 page thesis text, reporting on the current state of the art, the thesis process and results, and the research contribution. To pass the thesis (a requirement to finish the Master program) the student has to successfully defend the work in front of a jury of academics.

About our research group:
http://augment.cs.kuleuven.be

About our university:
https://www.kuleuven.be/english/

About me:
http://svencharleer.com/blog/about/