Realtime Feedback in Coding Games

Abstract

Visual feedback in the space of interactive media can give users more insight into the execution of a program. This paper discusses the implications and results of incorporating visual annotations into both programming environments and computer games and how it affects the user experience. We combined both of these spaces and developed a coding-based resource-management game and used playtesting feedback to analyze the impact of the visuals on a user’s performance in the game. The collected data shows that in general, the introduction of visuals assists players in making more well-informed decisions within a time limit. Based on these gathered results, there is clearly a lot of undiscovered potential for visual annotations in both coding and gaming to provide more informative experiences