Game User Experience Evaluation (eBook)

Contents 6
Contributors 8
Chapter-1 10
User Experience Evaluation Methods in the Games Development Life Cycle 10
1.1 Introduction 10
1.2 Defining User Experience 11
1.3 Methods to Evaluate UX in Games 13
References 16
Part I 18
User Orientated Methods 18
Chapter-2 19
Video Game Development and User Experience 19
2.1 Introduction 19
2.2 Previous Work 20
2.2.1 Traditional HCI Approaches 20
2.2.2 Refining Traditional Methods 21
2.2.3 Heuristics 21
2.2.4 User Experience 21
2.2.5 Game Development 22
2.3 Introduction to the Game Development Life Cycle 22
2.3.1 Concept 22
2.3.2 Prototyping 23
2.3.3 Pre-Production 23
2.3.4 Production 23
2.3.5 Alpha—Beta—Gold 24
2.4 Case Studies 24
2.4.1 Game Development at Black Rock Studio 25
2.4.2 Prototyping 25
2.4.3 Pre-Production 25
2.4.4 Alpha to Release 26
2.4.5 Post-Launch 27
2.4.6 Understanding the User 27
2.4.7 Pure Development Summary 29
2.4.8 Understanding the User 30
2.4.9 Game Language 31
2.4.10 Game Complexity and Accessibility 32
2.4.11 Usability Tests 33
2.4.12 Changing Demographic 33
2.4.13 Studio-Wide Quality Review 33
2.4.14 Postmortem 34
2.4.15 Summary 34
2.4.16 Internal Testing 35
2.4.17 Understanding Users 35
2.4.18 Post Launch 37
2.4.19 Relentless Software Typical Development Summary 37
2.4.20 Background 38
2.4.21 Prototyping 38
2.4.22 Development 39
2.4.23 User Testing 39
2.4.24 Release 40
2.4.25 Summary 40
2.5 Discussion 40
2.6 Future Challenges 41
References 42
Chapter-3 44
Assessing the Core Elements of the Gaming Experience 44
3.1 The Experience of Playing Video-Games 44
3.1.1 Introduction to Video-Games 45
3.1.2 Introduction to User Experience 45
3.1.3 Overview of the Chapter 46
3.2 The Concept of User Experience 46
3.2.1 Understanding Experience 46
3.2.2 Definition of User Experience 47
3.3 The Experience of Playing Video-Games 48
3.3.1 Optimal and Sub-Optimal Experience in Video-Games 49
3.3.2 The Need for a New Approach to Understand Experience in Video-Games 50
3.4 Defining the Gaming Experience 50
3.4.1 A Grounded Theory Approach 51
3.4.2 Defining the Core Elements 52
3.4.2.1 About the Video-Game 53
3.4.2.2 About Puppetry 54
3.4.3 About the Theory 59
3.5 Operationalising the Theory 60
3.5.1 The CEGE Model 60
3.5.2 A Questionnaire for the Gaming Experience 62
3.6 Examples of Using the Questionnaire 62
3.6.1 Method 63
3.6.1.1 Design 63
3.6.1.2 Participants 63
3.6.1.3 Apparatus and Materials 63
3.6.1.4 Procedure 63
3.6.2 Results 64
3.6.3 Discussion 64
3.6.4 Other Examples 65
3.7 Summary 65
Appendix 66
Core Elements of the Gaming Experience Questionnaire (CEGEQ) 66
References 68
Chapter-4 70
Games User Research and Physiological Game Evaluation 70
4.1 Introduction 70
4.2 Games User Research Methods 73
4.2.1 Behavioral Observation 73
4.2.2 Think-Aloud Protocol 75
4.2.3 Interviews 75
4.2.4 Questionnaires 76
4.2.5 Focus Groups 77
4.2.6 Heuristic Evaluation 77
4.2.7 Game Metrics 78
4.3 Physiological Game Evaluation 79
4.3.1 Introduction 79
4.3.2 Electromyography (EMG) 80
4.3.3 Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) 82
4.3.4 Cardiovascular Measures 83
4.3.5 Electroencephalography (EEG) 84
4.3.6 Ten ways in Which Physiological Evaluation is Valuable to the Games Industry 89
References 91
Chapter-5 94
Understanding Presence, Involvement, and Flow in Digital Games 94
5.1 Introduction 94
5.1.1 Games and Playing 95
5.1.2 Psychology of User Experience 96
5.1.3 User Experience in Games 98
5.1.4 Presence-Involvement-Flow Framework (PIFF) 100
5.1.4.1 Presence and Involvement 100
5.1.4.2 Flow 102
5.2 PIFF: Methodological Background 103
5.2.1 Presence and Involvement 105
5.2.2 Flow 106
5.3 PIFF2 in Practice 107
5.3.1 Between Groups: PIFF2 in Two Different Games 107
5.3.2 Between Users: Competence and Challenge in the First Hour 110
5.4 Contributions and Future Challenges 113
Appendix A: The Final PFA of the Presence and Involvement Measurement Model (Table A.1) 114
Appendix B: The Final PFA of the Flow Measurement Model (Table A.2) 115
References 115
Chapter-6 119
Evaluating User Experience Factors using Experiments: Expressive Artificial Faces Embedded in Contexts 119
6.1 Introduction 120
6.2 Related Work 120
6.2.1 General Description on Emotion 121
6.2.2 Games and User Experience 122
6.2.3 Embodied Conversational Agents 123
6.2.4 Facial Expressions performed by Embodied Conversational Agents 124
6.3 Evaluation 125
6.3.1 Methodological Considerations 126
6.3.2 Prestudy 1: Evaluation of Emotion-Eliciting Situations 126
6.3.3 Prestudy 2: Evaluation of Artificial Facial Expressions 128
6.3.4 Prestudy 3: Evaluation of Settings and Text Fragments 130
6.3.5 Experiment: Facial Expression and User Experience 130
6.4 Results 133
6.5 Conclusions and Future Work 134
References 135
Part II 138
Automated Methods 138
Chapter-7 139
Behavioral Telemetry in Games User Research 139
7.1 The Magic Measure of Play Experience 139
7.2 Player Behavior and Play Experience 142
7.3 Behavioral Game Telemetry 145
7.4 Working with Behavioral Telemetry 147
7.5 Finding the Right Behaviors to Track 150
7.6 Game Data Mining 153
Conclusions 162
References 166
Part III 170
Expert Orientated Methods 170
Chapter-8 171
User Experience Design for Inexperienced Gamers: GAP—Game Approachability Principles 171
8.1 Introduction 171
8.2 Game Approachability 175
8.2.1 Learning as a Means to Approachability 175
8.3 Design of the Study: Comparison of Empirical Usability Evaluation and Heuristic Evaluation by GAP 176
8.3.1 The Games 176
8.3.2 Heuristic Evaluation Based on GAP 177
8.3.3 Empirical Usability Evaluation 177
8.3.4 Comparison of Results 178
8.4 Results of the Heuristic Evaluation by GAP Heuristic Counts 179
8.4.1 Examples of Approachability Found In Data 179
8.4.1.1 GAP Found in Both User Testing and Heuristic Evaluation 184
8.4.2 Level of Detail 184
8.5 Conclusion 185
8.6 Future Work 186
References 186
Chapter-9 189
A Heuristic Framework for Evaluating User Experience in Games 189
9.1 Introduction 189
9.1.1 Overview 190
9.2 Video Game and Game Genres 191
9.3 User-Centred Design in Games 191
9.3.1 Heuristic Evaluation 192
9.4 History of Heuristics for Video Games 193
9.5 User Experience of Games 194
9.5.1 Measuring User Experience in Games 195
9.6 Overview and Review of Existing Video Game Heuristics and Their Impact onto User Experience 196
9.6.1 Video Game Heuristics 197
9.6.2 Heuristic Approach to User Experience 201
9.7 Results 203
9.8 Discussion and Future Work 204
Summary 205
References 205
Part IV 209
Game Specific Approaches 209
Chapter-10 210
Enabling Co-Located Physical Social Play: A Framework for Design and Evaluation 210
10.1 Introduction 210
10.2 The Emergence of Physical Social Play 211
10.3 Related Work 213
10.3.1 Designing Co-Located Social and Physical Play 213
10.3.2 Evaluating Co-Located Social and Physical Play 215
10.4 Framing Examples: Yamove and Oriboo 216
10.4.1 Yamove 216
10.4.2 Oriboo 218
10.5 Framework for Designing and Evaluating Co-Located Physical Social Play 220
10.5.1 Make Good Use of all of the Design Material at Hand–Technology, People, Setting 220
10.5.2 Design to Embrace Player Influence and Impact 225
10.5.3 Encourage and Protect the ‘We’ in Social Play 231
10.6 Recommendations for Optimal Process 234
10.6.1 Design 234
10.6.2 Evaluation 235
10.7 Conclusions and Future Work 236
References 236
Chapter-11 240
Evaluating Exertion Games 240
11.1 Introduction 240
11.2 Exertion Games and Affective Experience 242
11.3 Approach 244
11.4 Evaluating User Experience Post-Playing 245
11.4.1 Interviews 245
11.4.2 Prisoner-Dilemma Task 247
11.4.3 Questionnaire 250
11.5 Evaluating User Experience In-Place 251
11.6 Coding Body Movement 251
11.6.1 Automatically Coding Body Movement 253
11.7 Other Approaches of Evaluating Exertion Games 255
11.7.1 Physiological Measurements 255
11.7.2 Borg’s Perceived Exertion Scale 256
11.7.3 Evaluating Exertion Games Based on User Groups 257
11.7.4 Evaluating Using Blogs 257
11.8 Future Challenges 258
11.9 Final Thoughts 258
References 260
Chapter-12 264
Beyond the Gamepad: HCI and Game Controller Design and Evaluation 264
12.1 Introduction 264
12.2 The Evolution of Game Controllers 265
12.2.1 Standard Game Controllers 266
12.2.2 Focus on Innovative Game Controllers 267
12.3 Evaluating Game Controllers: Experience, Usability and Functionality 267
12.3.1 Introduction to the Components of Human Computer Interaction 268
12.3.2 Functionality and Game Controllers 268
12.3.3 Usability and Game Controllers 269
12.3.4 Experience and Game Controllers 270
12.3.5 Evaluation and Design of Game Controllers 271
12.4 Case Study 272
12.4.1 Justification 272
12.4.1.1 Functionality 272
12.4.1.2 Usability 272
12.4.1.3 Experience 273
12.4.2 Methodology 273
12.4.2.1 Procedure 274
12.4.3 Results 274
12.4.3.1 Functionality 274
12.4.3.2 Usability 275
12.4.3.3 User Experience 276
12.4.4 Combining the Results 280
12.4.5 Critique 282
12.4.6 Conclusions 283
12.5 Discussion 283
12.5.1 Implications and Recommendations 284
12.5.2 Future Research 284
References 285