Dr Penny Sweetser
This person does not currently hold a position at QUT.
Biography
Dr. Penny Sweetser is a lecturer in the Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment. She has several years' experience working in the games industry as a game designer, working on AAA titles such as BioShock 2, XCOM, and Medieval II: Total War.
She joined QUT in 2011 and now lectures games level design and interaction design. She completed her Ph.D. in 2006 on 'An Emergent Approach to Game Design - Development and Play'. She authored a book based on her Ph.D. research in 2007, entitled 'Emergence in Games'.
Penny has authored a number of conference and journal papers and book chapters on various topics related to game development, including emergence, artificial intelligence, player-centred design, and enjoyment.
Penny's research interests include various aspects of games design, related to enjoyment, training, learning, and pacing. She is also researching children's use of games and technology for learning and entertainment.
Personal details
Keywords
digital games, enjoyment, engagement, emergence, artificial intelligence, play experience, player experience, flow
Discipline
Information Systems
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- PhD (University of Queensland)
- Grad. Cert. in Education (Higher Ed.) (University of Queensland)
- B. Information Technology (Hons I) (University of Queensland)
Teaching
- Games Level Design is a practical games design subject, focusing on the player experience and how all aspects of games design converge to create engaging play experiences, when creating levels for games.
Penny has previously lectured and tutored various games and computer science subjects, including:
- Games Design
- Interaction Design
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Artificial Intelligence
- Software Engineering
- Software Process
Experience
- Neptune's Pride (np.ironhelmet.com)
- Blight of the Immortals (blight.ironhelmet.com)
- BioShock 2
- XCOM
- Medieval II: Total War
- Medieval II Total War: Kingdoms
Penny has worked for several games development companies, including:
- Iron Helmet Games
- 2K Australia
- 2K Marin
- Creative Assembly (Sega)
She has also worked as a lecturer, tutor, and researcher at:
- Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology
- School of ITEE, The University of Queensland
- Cognitive Engineering Research Group, The University of Queensland
- The University of Queensland Usability Laboratory
Selected publications
- Sweetser P, Johnson D, Ozdowska A, Wyeth P, (2012) Active versus passive screen time for young children, Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37 (4), pp. 94-98.
- Sweetser P, Johnson D, Wyeth P, (2012) Revisiting the GameFlow model with detailed heuristics, Journal of Creative Technologies, 2012 (3), pp. 1-16.
- Sweetser P, Johnson D, Wyeth P, Ozdowska A, (2012) GameFlow heuristics for designing and evaluating real-time strategy games, Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Playing the System, pp. 1-10.
- Sweetser P, (2008) Emergence in games, Charles River Media.
- Sweetser P, (2006) Environmental awareness in game agents. In S Rabin, AI Game Programming Wisdom 3, Charles River Media, pp. 457-468.
- Sweetser P, Wiles J, (2005) Combining influence maps and cellular automata for reactive game agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3578, pp. 524-531.
- Sweetser P, Wyeth P, (2005) GameFlow : a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games, Computers in Entertainment, 3 (3), pp. 1-24.
- Sweetser P, Wiles J, (2005) Scripting versus emergence: Issues for game developers and players in game environment design, International Journal of Intelligent Games and Simulation, 4 (1), pp. 1-10.
- Sweetser P, Johnson D, (2004) Player-centered game environments: Assessing player opinions, experiences, and issues, Entertainment Computing: proceedings of the 3rd International Conference, pp. 321-332.
- Sweetser P, Johnson D, Sweetser J, Wiles J, (2003) Creating engaging artificial characters for games, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Entertainment Computing, pp. 1-8.
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Penny, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).