Evaluating User Experience in Games: Concepts and Methods - Lirmm

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126 G. McAllister and G.R. White All studios agreed that they should be testing sooner, and approaches such as EA’s method of using focus groups early on to decide on key game concepts could easily be integrated into the development plan. The vertical slice could be used as an approximate measure for dividing usability testing from user experience testing. All studios acknowledge that testing a game’s overall user experience can only be measured once all the components are in place (final artwork, audio, game mechanics, etc.), and the earliest that this can be achieved is at the vertical slice. During interview, Zoë Mode mentioned that they were considering writing mock reviews before a game is released, and we feel that the vertical slice is a useful point at which reasonably representative and valuable data could be generated early in the lifecycle. If everything after the vertical slice is user experience oriented, then before that milestone the focus should be on usability issues. This would typically mean issues such as user interface layout, game controls or menu navigation. However, the usability/user experience divide around the vertical slice is not so clear cut. Usability issues will still need to be evaluated after this point (such as game flow and pace), and it is possible to evaluate user experience before the vertical slice (such as game concept focus group test at the start of a project). 7.6 Future Challenges Player enjoyment is currently understood by observing or asking participants for their reactions to a game. One of the key future challenges is to capture, measure and understand a player’s body data. Signals such as heart rate (ECG), skin conductance (GSR), facial muscle tension (EMG) or eye tracking may become integrated into commercial game usability evaluations in the future. Indeed, studios such as Valve have already expressed that bio-data could help them to better understand the game play experience (Newell 2008). Extensive academic research has been conducted on psychophysiological metrics (Mandryk 2005, FUGA 2006) and excellent tools and techniques for the capturing and analysis of such data are available (Nacke et al. 2008). However, the focus of these research projects has been on using biofeedback for automatic adaptation of game AI, rather than as a tool with which to iterate on the design of games prior to release. Furthermore, such studies tend to analyse very short periods of game play with small numbers of participants. It remains to be demonstrated whether such approaches can scale to be applicable for games that may be played by millions of diverse players and whether such techniques could be used for representative longitudinal studies of potentially many tens of hours. In addition to gathering data from the player’s body, the studios in our case studies have already begun to automatically capture player performance data directly from the game (such as Pure’s dynamic difficulty system). This makes it straightforward to capture an enormous amount of quantifiable metrics, making comparison across a large number of players easier.
7 Video Game Development and User Experience 127 This chapter has presented three case studies on how world-class games are currently developed. Although studios are keen to integrate usability evaluations into their life cycle, they are not certain how this can best be achieved. As such, one of the main barriers to conducting usability evaluations is the lack of a formal process that studios can follow. However, traditional usability has a similar issue where there is no strict process that can be followed, rather there are a toolbox of methods that exist which practitioners can use when needed. Future work may involve moving towards a general framework of game usability, which would detail not only the usability techniques which can be used, but also where in the life cycle they should be ideally applied. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank interviewees Casper Field, Jason Avent, Martin Newing, Dan Chequer and Karl Fitzhugh, and additional feedback from Thaddaeus Frogley. References Clanton C (1998) An interpreted demonstration of computer game design, CHI ’98 Conference Summary on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Cornett S (2004). The usability of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games: Designing for new users. In: Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 703–710. ACM, New York. doi:10.1145/985692.985781. Desurvire H, Caplan M, Toth JA (2004). Using heuristics to evaluate the playability of games. CHI ’04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/985921.986102. Desurvire H, Wiberg C (2008). Master of the game: Assessing approachability in future game design. CHI ’08 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Dovey J, Kennedy HW (2006) Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. Open University Press, Maidenhead. Federoff M (2002) Heuristics and guidelines for the creation and evaluation of fun in video games. Indiana University. FUGA (2006) Fun of gaming. http://project.hkkk.fi/fuga/. Accessed 13th December 2008. Isbister K (2006) Better Game Characters by Design. Morgan Kauffman, San Francisco, CA. Jennett C, Cox AL, Cairns P (2008) Being in the game. Proceedings of the Philosophy of Computer Games 2008, Potsdam University Press, pp. 210–227. Jørgensen AH (2004) Marrying HCI/Usability and computer games: A preliminary look. Proceedings of NordiCHI 2004. doi:10.1145/1028014.1028078. Laitinen S (2006) Do usability expert evaluation and test provide novel and useful data for game development? Journal of Usability Studies 2(1): 64–75. Larsen JM (2008) Evaluating user experience – How game reviewers do it. CHI Workshop. Lazzaro N (2004) Why we play games: Four keys to more emotion without story. Game Developers Conference. Malone T (1981) Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games. Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems, pp. 63–68. Mandryk RL (2005) Modeling user emotion in interactive play environments: A fuzzy physiological approach. Ph.D. Dissertation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. Medlock MC, Wixon D, Terrano M, Romero R, Fulton B (2002). Using the RITE method to improve products: A definition and a case study. Usability Professionals Association, Orlando FL. Nacke L, Lindley C, Stellmach S (2008) Log who’s playing: Psychophysiological game analysis made easy through event logging. In: Proceedings of 2nd International Conference Fun and Games 2008, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
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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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Contents Part I Introduction to Eva
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Contributors xvii Manfred Tscheligi
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Chapter 1 User Experience Evaluatio
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Chapter 2 Enabling Social Play: A F
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Index A Advanced interaction games,
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