Making Video Games Your Research

Louis Pisicolo, Verrazano Honors Class of 2018, earned a major in Computer Science


Greetings! My name is Louis Pisicolo and I am a computer science student at the College of Staten Island.  Thank you for taking the time to experience the fantastic journey that is my Capstone project.  My whole life I have played and enjoyed video games aspiring to one day create them as well.  It wasn’t until my senior year of High School that I was introduced to computer programming.  Through multiple courses involving Java and C#, I learned the basics of coding.  The final project in the C# class was to code and create a video game.  This was a major team-oriented, collaborative experience.  Together, our group designed and fully developed a comprehensive video game.  After graduating High School I knew that I wanted to major and pursue my aspirations in computer science.  As I advanced through the computer science curriculum, I learned that there were many other interesting subjects aside from the creation of video games.  I learned about developing websites, creating and modifying databases, hacking and securing computers, applying logical algorithms, and also about computer operating systems.  In my junior year of college, I took an elective concerning serious game development.  The class introduced me to Dr. Sturm, who taught us how to design and develop a game that serves another purpose, one that educates the player.   

Louis and his mentor, Dr. Sturm, at the Undergraduate Research Conference

It was with Dr. Sturm that I requested and began my capstone research.  Dr. Sturm has been working on a collaborative team concerning computer science and psychology, to create a game for individuals with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).  The goal of the game is to improve ASD individual’s collaboration skills, as well as their recognition of complex emotions.  It was an enlightening experience to be introduced to the team and learn about the project they had been working on.  I began by participating and play-testing the game, as well as observing and learning the games code.  Before long I began contributing to the coding process myself.  I began my research by implementing a coin system to the game.  The coin system was introduced to provide a visual representation of the player’s progression.  Players would receive coins for successfully putting a puzzle piece in the correct position.  The coins would accumulate and allow the player to spend their coins on the final reward level.  The reward level was a recommendation from a student in CSI’s REACH Program.  It involved the construction of a dragon using the same puzzle techniques used in the game.  I created a dragon scene in collaboration with the team and an artist who provided eight variations of dragon parts consisting of wings, arms, legs, heads, tails, and bodies.  This level acted as more than just a reward, but also as a test to see if efforts to train the collaborative skills of two ASD individuals would be a success.  Another concern in my research was player engagement.  The team had been charting on paper collaborative signs of the players, such as how many times they face each-other, and talk to each-other.  The team developed an engagement metric using face-point-cloud values to compute a player’s orientation.  This would allow for the automatic tracking and logging of player engagement whenever a player faces another player.  The engagement metric provided more accurate results than expected.  After comparing the computed logs to hand-coded logs, the computed logs were more accurate as they did not allow for human error.  
Experiencing a team environment involving video games again after so many years was both exciting and insightful.  This research not only enhanced my computing skills, but also exposed me to how two groups, computer science and psychology, communicate and resolve conflicts.  The conversations that arose reminded me of very real-world business conflicts that computer scientists must partake in.  Often computer scientists have to take the ideas of another party and explain what is wrong with it, what is right with it, as well as which parts of it can actually be implemented.  Both parties when conducting my research, did well to understand each-other, which led to very motivating and highly productive meetings.  
I’m very glad to be a part of the Verrazano Program, a program that promotes and emphasizes the importance of undergraduate research.   I’m truly thankful to Dr. Sturm for providing me with an amazing research experience, as well as lessons that I will apply through my entire career.  Thank you for reading and experiencing my research with me, I wish you well with your undergraduate research, careers, and futures!