Evaluating User Experience in Games: Concepts and Methods - Lirmm

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118 G. McAllister and G.R. White team, with Microsoft presenting data in the form X out of Y participants found this aspect of the game problematic. Twelve groups of four participants were involved during the course of a week. Recognising that this is a small sample size, particularly given the intention to sell the game to millions of consumers, Fitzhugh would like to involve more people but does reflect on the difficulty of analysing a much greater volume of data. In particular, he comments that participant selection is critical, so while the kind of ad hoc testing they have performed with friends and families can be productive, formal testing should be of a much higher standard. Some focus testing was also conducted with EyeToy Play Sports. Sessions were led and run by the publisher, Sony, at a location in London rather than in the developer’s studio. Newing is keen to point out, as have others in our case studies, that publisher interest in this kind of testing is very welcome but currently uncommon. Furthermore, Newing is also aware that focus group testing can be misleading if the sample size is too small to draw general conclusions or so wide that the results suggest the game be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Chequer is also anxious about individual participants controlling focus group discussions by exerting their influence on other participants who may have valuable feedback which is never revealed. This is a concern for all focus group studies, however, we would argue that good moderation should be able to overcome this challenge and draw out all issues that any of the participants may have. As with other studios in this series of case studies, Zoë Mode points out the problems of presenting pre-release games to focus groups. In particular, Newing relates an anecdote about showing an early version of the game to personal friends and family who were simply too distracted by the poor quality of early artwork to want to play the game. Zoë Mode’s latest release, Rock Revolution, incorporated observational playtesting as a key part of the development process. Chequer argues that running these studies was essential for Jam Mode, a more free-form music making part of the game. Although the team already had some ideas about aspects that needed to be changed, observing real players struggle gave them the impetus to actually make the changes before release. Indeed, the bulk of revisions came from focus group and playtesting, with Chequer mentioning two issues in particular: help text to explain what on-screen buttons do and further encouragement for first-time players to just get in and start making music. Despite Rock Revolution being a challenging project with some poor reviews, and only one iteration for testing, the team were pleased that a GameSpot preview praised the game’s Studio, in which Jam Mode takes place, saying “The most fun we found is in the jam session”. 7.4.2.2 Game Language Discussing the value of observing playtests, Newing and Chequer reflect on how easy it is for developers to overlook the simplest of things which can impede novice players from even starting to play. Like the other studios in this study, the team are now aware of the problems associated with using traditional terminology for games that are intended to appeal to a broader demographic.
7 Video Game Development and User Experience 119 Newing referred to the distinction between “Challenge Mode” and “Story Mode”, which are clear labels for the team who’ve discussed and created these different play modes, but for the player who’s just interested in playing for the first time they can be a source of uncertainty. Newing goes on to discuss the difference between the traditional “Easy”, “Medium” and “Hard” difficulty levels, commenting that typically these offer effectively the same game with more or less and harder or weaker enemies. Critiquing the terminology of difficulty further, Newing also refers to Brothers In Arms – Hell’s Highway, which offers “Casual”, “Veteran” and an unlockable setting, “Authentic”. However, the descriptive text for even the casual setting gives the impression that it is a challenging setting even for experienced players. The alternative he proposes is, rather than varying the number and strength of the opposition, to vary the game mechanics. This way, the easiest levels would accommodate only a simple subset of possible mechanics which could be opened up to the player at harder levels. A case in point is the Nintendo 64’s Golden Eye where higher difficulty levels provided extra challenges by adding more demanding success criteria. Levels could be completed by beginners, but on the more advanced settings players would be required to complete additional goals. The EyeToy series of games gave Zoë Mode a particular challenge due to their unique input mechanism. Players interact with these games primarily through their real-world movements which are seen by a camera attached to the console. For gamers and non-gamers alike, this is a novel mode of interaction which introduces the potential for many problems. Chequer remembers one particular scenario where the player was in-game, then the game cut to a non-interactive animation before returning to interactive play. During the observational sessions, it became clear that the players did not understand the difference between the interactive and noninteractive sections and were unclear when their physical movements in front of the camera would have an effect or not. Fitzhugh likewise discusses some of the challenges of You’re in the Movies and communicating technical instructions to the player. For this game, there is a calibration process which requires the player to evaluate whether the game has successfully identified and separated the camera’s image of the player from the background of the room they’re playing in. The developers refer to this process as “segmentation”, a technical term that comes from the field of image processing – a concept and term that’s almost certainly alien to players of this casual game. Despite using everyday language both in voiceover and on-screen texts, the team had to iterate through several different phrases during focus testing, for example “have you been successfully cut out from the background?” Unfortunately, even this apparently straightforward question was inappropriate for the audience who were concentrating more on the fact that they appeared on-screen than on attending to the game’s needs of identifying whether its algorithm had been successful or not. Finally, the team settled on the presentation of images showing examples of what successful and unsuccessful results would look like, which is effectively a tutorial or training session for the player. This is particularly significant for casual games which are intended to be played by anyone, and especially people unwilling to invest much time and effort in learning how to effectively use them.
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Human-Computer Interaction Series E
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Regina Bernhaupt Editor Evaluating
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For Philippe
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viii Foreword Chapter 3, Presence I
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x Foreword personality which evolve
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Contents Part I Introduction to Eva
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Contributors Regina Bernhaupt IRIT,
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Contributors xvii Manfred Tscheligi
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xx About the Authors Emily Brown is
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xxiv About the Authors Christina Ko
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xxvi About the Authors MIT Media La
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xxviii About the Authors Theft Auto
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Chapter 1 User Experience Evaluatio
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1 User Experience Evaluation in Ent
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Chapter 2 Enabling Social Play: A F
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Index A Advanced interaction games,
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