The Philippines’ First Game Research Conference

October 23, 2019

Function Room 1, SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia

Ticket price: P1500.00

Early Bird Rate (until October 15): P1200.00

REGISTER

About LARO

The Ludology Academic Research Output Conference (LARO) wishes to provide a forum for both students and professionals to present their research in the field of game development and to cultivate an academic community for the Philippine game development industry.

Building Blocks for Game Research

The event will serve as foundations to further build research on various aspects of game development in the country.

SPEAKERS

Beatrice M.V. Lapa, Ph.D

Dr. Beatrice Lapa is a Full Professor at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde and the founder of Senshi.Labs, a game studio developing educational games. She took her master’s degree in Information Management at the Asia Pacific College, and her PhD in Communication at UP Diliman. She is an industry veteran that’s worked on multiple award-winning titles.

Philip Adrian L. Gungab, MFA

Philip Adrian Gungab is an illustrator, 2D art instructor at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde and a co-founder of Re:Cast Games. He recently earned his Masters of Fine Arts and Design from the Philippine Women’s University with research focusing on pixel art and its current state as a digital art movement.

Chaotic Bot

David Pacheco, Shellina Magarzo, Aien Rustainne Mayores and Nathaniel Gonzales are graduates of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde and the creators of Nutrimania: a time management cooking game where players stop world hunger one community at a time.

Halfbyte

Derek Bocar, Ivan Albino, Faith Dimaranan and Lorenzo Morta are Game Development students from Asia Pacific College who have created Fragments, a 2D, story-oriented puzzle game that tells the story of a child named Angelo, how he ended up on the streets, and his struggles along the way.

Playpals Studios

Jose Mari Glen Diosanta, Royn Kim Meguiso, Ernesto Quiles, Charmaine Yaun and Juanito Jose Padilla are Computer Science students from University of St. La Salle who developed a thesis called RiffRaff: Augmented Reality Educational Game with Progression Difficulty Algorithm, a game that teaches the value of waste segregation and hygiene using augmented reality.

2B1C

Mick Amaro, Sistine Cinco and Paolo Donato have been together since their humble beginnings in De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde’s IEMC Program. After finding their footing in multiple projects, both school-related and extracurricular, they created Piece of Home: a narrative puzzle game that tells of Alex’s journey through forgotten childhood memories.

Meowfia

Nahyan Alfalahi, Angelica Canta, Michelle Lim, Neal Padama, and Trina Pagtakhan are students of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. They created Turtle Tale, a game where one plays as a conservatory volunteer that aims to help turtles and the environment in a tropical island in the Philippines.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

8:00 – 8:30 AM

Registration

8:30 – 8:45 AM

Invocation and National Anthem

Norman Lee

-Academic Head, Game Developers Association of the Philippines

-Founding Chair for GDD, De La Salle College of St. Benilde

8:45 – 9:00 AM

Opening Remarks

Alvin Juban

-President, Game Developers Association of the Philippines

-Business Development Head, Synergy 88

9:00 – 9:30 AM

The Pixel Art Movement: Investigating Pixel Art’s Place in Art and Design

Philip Adrian Gungab, MFA

9:30 – 10:00 AM

Piece of Home: Bridging Past and Present with Interactive Narratives

Vearce Micah Amaro

Mary Sistine Cinco

Cesar Paolo Donato

-De La Salle College of St. Benilde

10:00 – 10:30 AM

RiffRaff: Augmented Reality Educational Game with Progression Difficulty Algorithm

Jose Mari Glen Diosanta

Royn Kim Meguiso

Juanito Jose Padilla

Ernesto Quiles

Charmaine Yaun

-University of St. La Salle Bacolod

10:30 – 11:00 AM

Turtle Tale: Promoting Plastic Waste Reduction Strategies through Video Games

Nahyan Al Falahi

Maria Angelica Canta

Michelle Lim

Neal Patrick Padama

Trina Francesca Pagtakhan

-De La Salle College of St. Benilde

11:00 – 11:30 AM

Putting the Challenge of Zero Hunger in Nutrimania

Nathaniel Gonzales

Shellina Magarzo

Aien Rustainne Mayores

David Justin Pacheco

-De La Salle College of St. Benilde

11:30 – 12:00 PM

Re-Imagining the Sibling Rivalry Narrative in Ibong Adarna

Beatrice Margarita V. Lapa, PhD

12:00 – 12:30 PM

Fragments: A Critical Look into the Situation of Street Children in the Philippines through a Puzzle Game

Ivan Albino

Derek Earl Bocar

Faith Dimaranan

Lorenzo Miguel Morta

-Asia Pacific College

12:30 – 1:45 PM

Lunch

1:45 – 2:30 PM

Games x (n): Pipelines and Operation

Ryan Sumo, CEO of Squeaky Wheel

James Lo, President and CEO of Taktyl Studios

Marthy Angue, Vice President of Gunship Revolution

2:30 – 3:15 PM

Games x (n): Monetization

Josh Bautista, Business Development Director of Monstronauts

Ephrem Dela Cerna, CEO of Seaversity

3:15 – 4:00 PM

Games x (n): Marketing

Heidi Caga-Casiño, Relationship Manager of Global Payments

Walter Manalo, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ranida Games

Thea Morrison, Business Developer and Co-Founder of Keybol Games

4:00 – 4:45 PM

Should E-Sports be Taught in School?

Alan Chou, CEO of Meta.us (Singapore)

Felix Ramli, CEO of Game Level One (Indonesia)

David Tse, Global E-Sports Director for Razer (Singapore)

Marlon Marcelo, Country Manager, Mineski

4:45 – 5:00 PM

Closing Remarks

ABSTRACTS

Fragments: A Critical Look into the Situation of Street Children in the Philippines through a Puzzle Game

Street children are commonly seen almost anywhere in the Philippines. They are children who live, work, or spend most of their time on the streets. Some of them do not have families or are their basic human needs properly provided. The goal of this project is to raise awareness for street children in the Philippines and informing people about possible ways to help them.

By researching about the lifestyles of street children and with the cooperation of the organizations that are involved in their welfare, the everyday struggles of a street child are brought to light through our game, “Fragments”.

Fragments is a puzzle game that tells the story of a boy named Angelo, and how he ended up in the streets. At the end of the game, contact information from the Department of Social Welfare and Development is provided, in hopes of letting more people know that there are ways to help street children other than field work.

Keywords: Street Children, Story, games

Piece of Home: Bridging Past and Present with Interactive Narratives

The paper reviews how narrative games could create empathy in different experiences each generation underwent. As individuals are born into new decades, alternative ideas get formed and they may not be understood by varying age groups without proper context. This study aims to establish empathetic relationships between players of different generations by immersing them in relatable narratives.

According to an online qualitative survey conducted to a small sample size of Filipinos of varying ages, individuals experience the generation gap in the family when trying to share trends and points of view, which was in line with the narrative direction of Piece of Home. Although respondents also find trouble relating to their peers and culture in the workplace, which opens opportunities for a different portrayal for interactive literature.

It is hoped that this study will pave a way for future developers to create engaging narratives that would encourage building empathy

in the experiences of each generation.

Keywords: generation gap, gaming, interactive learning

Putting the Challenge of ZeroHunger in Nutrimania

World Hunger has been a persistent problem of food insecurity and malnutrition, andwith each passing year, the number of people suffering from hunger slowly increases. Due tothis alarming finding, the United Nations (UN) launched an advocacy agenda entitled as theZero Hunger Challenge (ZHC). It calls upon organization, entities and individuals into takingactions against the issue. As game developers, interventions can be made using a gamingplatform as a way of reaching the message to a wider audience. By gathering data aboutmacronutrients, malnutrition, feeding programs and other national policies, these can bestreamlined and abstracted as game mechanics relevant to the players. Thus, through anemerging game project, it opens the possibility of exploring other pertinent topics surroundingworld hunger and urging other game developers to become supporters of the ZHC.

Keywords: Advocacy, games, hunger, nutrition

RiffRaff: Augmented Reality Educational Game with Progression Difficulty Algorithm

Proper waste management and segregation has been a practice Corazon LocsinMontelibano Elementary School (CLMES) has learned to adapt over the years if implementation, today – the children are aware of their waste and the only thing to do is to consistently follow up the students’ habits. There arises a new problem, with the constant contact of waste to the skin, germs and the diseases that they carry endanger the students’ health and their school performance. Teaching the students in a classroom-setting has been effective but with the rise of technology, the researchers present an efficient solution that allows the users to understand and learn about the importance of continuing the habit of proper waste management and the practice of proper hygiene and sanitation with an educational game. Adaptive progression algorithm is an implementation of difficulty that allows the progression of the game to adapt according to the user’s skill and ability. Study confirms that the appeal of going such lengths to create a game to educate and influence habits to children allows learning to become enjoyable and interesting. A student that can apply hygiene and sanitation in line with the habit of proper waste segregation is said to have good performance. The execution of this study benefits not only the students of CLMES but also the greater good.

Keywords:  Adaptive Progression Algorithm, Educational, Augmented Reality, Waste Segregation

Turtle Tale: Promoting Plastic Waste Reduction Strategies through Video Games

The growing amount of waste produced by the continuing consumption of single-use plastics causes severe negative effects on the ecosystem, as well as various economic sectors worldwide. Other researchers have found ways to raise awareness about the issue of plastic pollution and its effects in the form of video games. However, preceding projects fail to introduce concrete steps that players of the game can take in order to minimize individual plastic waste footprint, leaving a research gap for the team to explore. This paper aims to address the presentation of practical plastic waste reduction solutions to its audience in a manner that is simultaneously informative and entertaining, through the interactive characteristic of video games.

Keywords: plastic pollution, ecobricks, plastic waste segregation, video games

Re-Imagining the Sibling Rivalry Narrative in Ibong Adarna

Almost all high schools require the reading of Jose de la Cruz’s “Korrido and Life Lived by the Three Princes, Children of King Fernando and Queen Valeriana in the Kingdom of Berbanya”, more popularly known as “Ibong Adarna”. The story seems to promote, however, family values that are rife with jealousy and betrayal, as shown in how the protagonists’ older brothers violently turn on him when he just effectively rescued them from certain doom. This paper describes a video game project, Adarna, as it re-imagines Filipino sibling rivalry that evolves from intense competition to brotherly coopetition. The project aims to be a point of discussion in universities and colleges’ game development classes, in particular those that involve the study of the socio-cultural impact of games.

Keywords: Philippine literature, culture, games, family

The Pixel Art Movement: Investigating Pixel Art’s Place in Art and Design

Pixel art is a form of digital art made through abstraction of objects into low resolution,pixelated images using precise pixel placement and a limited color palette. It has been used as a graphical style of video games since the 80’s as a means to provide visuals within technological limitations. Decades later, despite the prevalence of high definition graphics in video games pixel art has experienced a resurgence. This study aims to view today’s pixel art as an art movement by analyzing its aesthetic and technical similarities to the Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism movements. This study also wishes to investigate how pixel art has remained relevant as a form of postmodern art.

Keywords: pixel art, art movement, neo-impressionism, postmodernism

HOSTED BY

EVENT PARTNERS

CONTACT US FOR INQUIRIES AND SPONSORSHIPS

Project
Project
Freelance
Business

FOLLOW US!

FACEBOOK+

REGISTER NOW!

BUY TICKETS
Close Menu