34 research outputs found
Biometric storyboards: a games user research approach for improving qualitative evaluations of player experience
Developing video games is an iterative and demanding process. It is difficult to achieve the goal of most video games â to be enjoyable, engaging and to create revenue for game developers â because of many hard-to-evaluate factors, such as the different ways players can interact with the game. Understanding how players behave during gameplay is of vital importance to developers and can be uncovered in user tests as part of game development. This can help developers to identify and resolve any potential problem areas before release, leading to a better player experience and possibly higher game review scores and sales. However, traditional user testing methods were developed for function and efficiency oriented applications. Hence, many traditional user testing methods cannot be applied in the same way for video game evaluation.
This thesis presents an investigation into the contributions of physiological measurements in user testing within games user research (GUR). GUR specifically studies the interaction between a game and users (players) with the aim to provide feedback for developers to help them to optimise the game design of their title. An evaluation technique called Biometric Storyboards is developed, which visualises the relationships between game events, player
feedback and changes in a playerâs physiological state. Biometric Storyboards contributes to the field of human-computer interaction and GUR in three important areas: (1) visualising mixedmeasures of player experience, (2) deconstructing game design by analysing game events and pace, (3) incremental improvement of classic user research techniques (such as interviews and physiological measurements).
These contributions are described in practical case studies, interviews with game developers and laboratory experiments. The results show this evaluation approach can enable games user researchers to increase the plausibility and persuasiveness of their reports and facilitate developers to better deliver their design goals. Biometric Storyboards is not aimed at replacing existing methods, but to extend them with mixed methods visualisations, to provide powerful tools for games user researchers and developers to better understand and communicate player needs, interactions and experiences. The contributions of this thesis are directly applicable for user researchers and game developers, as well as for researchers in user experience evaluation in entertainment systems
Gamification of Older Adultsâ Physical Activity: An Eight-Week Study
Designing fitness programs to combat a sedentary lifestyle and foster older adultsâ motivation and goal-setting is not yet well-understood beyond point-based systems. To improve older adultsâ (over 50 years) health and wellness, we studied a gamified physical activity intervention over eight weeks in an experiment (N=30) with three conditions (gamified, non-gamified, control). Our qualitative analysis showed the gamified group exhibited more engagement and interest in performing physical activity facilitated by technology. Results from our quantitative analysis indicated significance in the perceived competence dimension compared to the non-gamified and the control group. Perceived autonomy was significant for the non-gamified group against the control group. The findings from qualitative and quantitative analysis show motivation, enjoyment, and engagement were higher in the gam-ified group. This provides support for successfully facilitating older adultsâ physical activity through gamified technology, which helped us create guide-lines for older adultsâ adaptive engagement
Exploiting players? critical reflections on participation in game development
Player involvement in the process of game development has become a de-facto standard in both industry and academia. Participation is intended to empower players, while helping designers create better games. However, participation also introduces uncertainty regarding playersâ and designersâ relative roles, and creates new concerns over the exploitation of players, marginalization of designers, and the quality of game design outcomes. In this workshop, we invite the games research community to critically reflect on methods used to facilitate player participation, with the goal of establishing dialogue around meaningful and constructive player involvement
Towards Democratisation of Games User Research:Exploring Playtesting Challenges of Indie Video Game Developers
Playtesting is a games user research (GUR) method used to evaluate design decisions based on feedback gathered from players with the goal to improve player experiences (PX). HCI games research has been actively working on and promoting best practices in GUR. However, these practices often require resources, knowledge and expertise, which are not readily available for indie video games developers. Thus, to better understand how GUR can support these developers, we conducted an interview study with 13 indie games professionals to learn about their practices and the challenges they face when doing playtesting. We report on the key findings from this study, including challenges with finding appropriate participants and handling the data from playtests. We provide a discussion of how existing GUR practices can be adapted and what HCI games research can do to help mitigate these challenges to make playtesting more accessible and impactful to indie video games developers
Games and Play SIG: Connecting Games Research to the Broader HCI Context
Research on games and play has been present at CHI since the first conference in 1982. The community-building efforts of many volunteers has grown the games and play community within SIGCHI into a vibrant and active group of researchers, with a dedicated conference (CHI PLAY) that publishes its full papers in the GAMES track of the ACM PACMHCI journal. However, we there are members of the larger HCI community whose research and practice intersects with games and playâin topics such as emerging technologies; VR/AR/XR; theories of motivation, experience, and personality; metaverse; livestreaming; fan, and spectator communities; accessibility; and serious gamesâwho may never have attended a games-specific conference. The purpose of this SIG is to offer a lightweight opportunity for CHI attendees to connect with the games and play research community. Our aim is to meet as a community, and to connect with HCI researchers who have not traditionally seen their work as part of games and play for networking and bi-directional idea exchange
Biometric Storyboards: visualising meaningful gameplay events
Due to the specific characteristics of video games most of the established HCI methods of user research cannot be used the same way for video games. One of the challenges is to gain insight into how players feel and behave when playing a game. This paper explores a technique on using Biometrics measure and Storyboards where we graph the player's experience journey over a longer period. The graph could visualise a meaningful relationship between the changes in a player's biometric signal and game events. This would enable game developers to have a better understanding of players' gameplay behaviour and eventually help them optimise the experience of their game
Understanding the Contribution of Biometrics to Games User Research
Utilising biometric data has become an increasingly active area in the video games user research community, and a number of academic papers have been published introducing various biometric based analysis techniques in video games research. This paper aims to quantify the value of biometric methods as an addition to traditional observation-based user research methodologies, and their respective contributions to the production of formative feedback during the development of video games. Our results show that observation-based techniques can expose the majority of issues relating to usability, however the biometrics-based approach enabled researchers to discover latent issues in related to players' feelings, immersion and gameplay experience and, in certain categories of issue, reveal up to 63% more issues than observation alone
Biometrics to Improve Methodologies on Understanding Player's Gameplay Experience
Due to the specific characteristics of video games most of the established HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) methods of user research cannot be used the same way for video games. To address this, the research project presented here adapts methods suited for empirical research on video games. This will be based on utilising player's physiological measures in conjunction with other user research methodologies such as observation, interview, think-aloud, heuristics, behavioural coding and player emotion