Gameplay Experience Research Articles

The effects of happiness types and happiness congruity on game app advertising and environments

While gameplay experience is a multi-dimensional and multi-layered concept depending on game genres and players, one of the major motivations to play is the pursuit of happiness. This study distinguishes games of different happiness types and explores the advertising effects on young adults that resulted from multiple sources. They include: the happiness expected from advertised game apps; the happiness experienced when playing games with embedded ads; and the happiness congruity between game app advertising and environments. The effects of ad background colors and promotional incentives are also examined. Experimental results reveal that: advertising excited-happiness game apps and ads embedded in calm-happiness game app environments lead to better advertising effects; happiness incongruity generates higher intention to play the experimental game again; ad background colors and the presence of promotional incentives moderate happiness congruity effects; and red backgrounds (versus gray and blue) and incentives generate better attitudinal responses and click intentions.

Materialist fantasies: The voice as objet petit a in digital games

Abstract This article takes its starting point from the materialist turn in game studies and, through an examination of the cultural implications of the movement from textual to aural dialogue in digital games, offers as supplement to psychoanalytic approaches already employed in game studies that turn on the embodied experience of gameplay and the materialization of bodies. The embodied practice of subvocalization that accompanies the act of reading is discussed, and several vital tenants of Lacanian psychoanalysis are introduced: the split subject; the Real, Imaginary and Symbolic registers; the mirror stage and its acoustic counterpart; imaginary and symbolic identification; fantasy; and the object voice. Lacanian psychoanalysis provides a critical frame revealing that aural representation of dialogue enables players to better identify as game characters, a narcissistic investment in the ideal subject of the game. Textual representation, reading and subvocalization of dialogue, on the other hand, better enable identification with the game itself, the very system that demands a certain subject. While no guarantee, this is a condition of possibility of confronting the underlying structure of fantasy that organizes all digital games, regardless of their thematic, mechanic and narrative particularities, and thus a condition of possibility for players to recognize how their gameplay is implicated in consumer capitalism. The article not only argues for the importance of games criticism considering this oft-overlooked aspect, but it also points to material experiences that are generalizable across populations of players.

The Gamer Response and Decision Framework

Aim. This article presents the Gamer Response and Decision Framework as a tool for understanding how people interpret, make decisions, and learn during their video gaming experiences. Background. The Gamer Response and Decision Framework combines Rosenblatt’s Reader Response Theory with a variety of other concepts and frameworks related to new literacies, multimodality, learning theory, psychology, and video gaming. This Framework illustrates that every individual has unique experiences, knowledge, skills, agency, self-efficacy, and goals, and these components influence how people interpret and make decisions during video gameplay, which affects how the game unfolds as a unique experience for each gamer. Together these ideas illustrate that no two gamers have the same experience when playing a video game. Understanding video gameplay experiences is important as it represents a dynamic process in which gamers interpret a wide variety of multimodal symbols, experiment and learn in these digital environments, and solve complex problems in order to progress in the game. Conclusion. The Gamer Response and Decision Framework can be used to understand, investigate, and analyze video gameplay experiences and has significant implications for our understanding the thought, decision-making, and learning processes that gamers experience. In the future, researchers in a variety of fields including education, game studies, and game design can use this framework to analyze how people interact with video games.

The economics of free

The gaming industry has seen dramatic change and expansion with the emergence of ‘casual’ games that promote shorter periods of gameplay. Free to download, but structured around micropayments, these games raise the complex relationship between game design and commercial strategies. Although offering a free gameplay experience in line with open access philosophies, these games also create systems that offer control over the temporal dynamics of that experience to monetize player attention and inattention. This article will examine three ‘freemium’ games, Snoopy Street Fair, The Simpsons’ Tapped Out and Dragonvale, to explore how they combine established branding strategies with gameplay methods that monetize player impatience. In examining these games, this article will ultimately indicate the need for game studies to interrogate the intersection between commercial motivations and game design and a broader need for media and cultural studies to consider the social, cultural, economic and political implications of impatience.

Library Escape: User-Centered Design of an Information Literacy Game

The number of digital games for educational purposes has grown rapidly, and there is a potential for libraries to utilize them in information literacy (IL) education. Scholars have called for rigor in both the educational effectiveness and game-play experience in educational game design. One way to achieve this is to adopt a user-centered approach. Therefore, this article describes the user-centered design process of an IL game that actively involved potential users. A participatory design workshop and subsequent user evaluation yielded low- and high-fidelity prototypes. Insights on the complexities of educational game design were uncovered, including being accommodating yet pragmatic toward user input, keeping the balance between enjoyment and learning, and being guided yet flexible in using theoretical frameworks. Future directions for this IL game and general educational game design are also discussed.

Playing the Panopticon

This article investigates discursive procedures in From Software’s 2011 videogame Dark Souls. By combining procedural rhetorics, discourse analysis, and autoethnographical research play, it is argued that Dark Souls features post-Panoptical gameplay mechanics of both continuous surveillance and playful exhibitionism and a hybrid gameplay experience of both subjectivation and empowerment. Players randomly confront one another in a notoriously difficult and unforgiving game space that requires commitment and perseverance. The game, it is shown, provides a metaphor for online surveillance mechanics in which players/netizens are not just democratically gazing at each other but subjected to a procedural system determining who can see whom. Simultaneously, players are offered a number of procedural methods and moral archetypes to normalize and empower them.

Older Adults’ Digital Gameplay

Background. Empirical evidence suggests that digital gameplay can enhance social interaction and improve cognition for older adults. However, if digital games are to be effectively used as interventions to address age-related challenges, it is important to explore older adults’ experiences in playing them. Aim. The purpose of this survey design study was to identify digital gameplay patterns, perceived socio-emotional and cognitive benefits, and difficulties encountered in the gameplay experiences of older adults. Method. Adults aged 55 or older, recruited from seniors’ centers and local shopping malls in a Canadian city, responded to a printed, mainly closed-ended questionnaire. Results. 463 respondents reported that they actively play digital games. Most played alone rather than with others, and most rated themselves as intermediate or expert players. Players self-reported cognitive benefits but few socio-emotional benefits and few difficulties. Conclusions. The results of this study show promise for the use of digital games to provide innovative and engaging activities for enhancing older adults’ aging processes. Significant associations were found between player skill level and reported benefits. Recommendations. To perceive these benefits, older adults need to play frequently enough to develop beyond a beginner level. Education, facilitation, and support may be needed to encourage older adults to realize socio-emotional benefits from digital gameplay.

Repeated Play Reduces Video Games’ Ability to Elicit Guilt: Evidence from a Longitudinal Experiment

Statements supported mostly by correlational and cross-sectional studies suggest that playing violent video games can cause emotional desensitization. A longitudinal experiment examined a) whether repeated violent game play leads to emotional desensitization and b) whether desensitization generalizes to other play and real-life experiences. Participants played alternative versions of the same violent game for the first four days; on these days, the character role was varied between-subjects to be moral (United Nations soldier) or immoral (terrorist soldier). On Day 5, all participants played a novel game as a terrorist. Results indicate two things. First, habituation occurs over repeated game play: Repeated exposure decreased the ability of the original game to elicit guilt. Second, the decreased ability to elicit guilt can generalize to other game-play experiences: Guilt elicited by the novel game on Day 5 was reduced for the immoral character condition compared to the moral character condition. The current study provides causal, longitudinal evidence regarding the potential for video game play to lead to emotional desensitization with regard to future video game-play experiences.

Super Busy Hospital: wicked games that triage

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of how university students address learning through playing wicked games. Design/methodology/approach – Using a case study run by the author of a university undergraduate education module, qualitative data are provided to support a pragmatic model of addressing the issues of realistic behavior and outcomes. Findings – Through a combination of elements – mainly, integration of more conventional academic research, use of repeated points of contact between students and the lecturer and extensive reflection after the activity by the student – it is possible to provide for a gameplay experience that more closely follows real-world outcomes than would otherwise occur. Research limitations/implications – The use of a single case study clearly limits the ability to generalize and implies the need to replicate the work in new iterations and in new contexts. Practical implications – The paper highlights the importance of grounding wicked gameplay in realit...

디지털 게임의 부분유료화 모델에 관한 연구

디지털 게임의 부분유료화 모델은 플레이어로 하여금 신규 게임 유입의 장벽을 낮추고 동시에 소액 결제를 통해 소비를 유도하여 안정적인 수익을 촉발한다는 점에서 게임 업계의 대표적인 수익모델로 평가받고 있다. 하지만 부분유료화를 통해 제공되는 서비스들의 종류와 적용 대상, 적용 양상이 다양해지면서 있는 플레이어들의 게임 플레이 경험에 불균형을 양산하는 문제를 만들고 있다. 이에 본 논문은 부분유료화의 개념과 특징을 정리하고, 획득방법, 지속성, 기능 발현 대상에 따라 2가지 유형, 7가지 세분류를 진행하였다. 이 과정을 통해 부분유료화 모델이 가지는 세 가지 문제점을 도출할 수 있었는데 첫째, 게임 플레이 경험의 불평등 유발, 둘째, 게임 세계 경제의 불균형 양산, 셋째 게임 플레이 지속성 파괴가 바로 그것이다. 본 논문에서는 이 세 가지 문제점을 구체적인 사례를 중심으로 설명하고 그 해결책을 제언하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 이러한 연구는 앞으로의 부분유료화 모델이 한국 게임 시장에 어떤 방식으로 적용되어야 하는지에 대한 지표를 제공한다는 점에서 의의를 찾을 수 있다.

The Game of Politics

This article examines the game Papers, Please to demonstrate how the aesthetic experience of gameplay resonates with the cultural logic of contemporary globalist paradigms. The author demonstrates how video games make their players undertake a synthesis of work and play via a process of psychological and physical self-modification. This interrelation between work, play, and subjectivity modification within gameplay experiences embodies the same ideological framework that governs many knowledge-based economies which thrive off of user-generated content. In using the work/play/subjectivity connection to locate similarities between video games and the logic of globalist paradigms, the author presents a revised understanding of what constitutes the political dimensions of video games and the experiences they elicit in their players. This article concludes with an analysis of how the mechanics and narrative of Papers, Please embodies the cultural mind-set of work-as-play while simultaneously challenging the discourses often applied to user-focused information technologies.

Dressing Commander Shepard in pink: Queer playing in a heteronormative game culture

This article explores the strategies of queer playing of video games and their relationship to the heteronormative game culture. Its premise is that most video games are, either implicitly or explicitly, heteronormative and the inscribed player of such games is in the majority of cases a heterosexual male. In order to achieve the same level of identification with an avatar and to enjoy a similar gameplay experience as the heterosexual player, the LGBT player may have to deploy various strategies to challenge the game and work around it, or to find the LGBT content which some more progressive games offer. The study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with six players (5 males and 1 female) who identified themselves both as homosexual and as players of the Mass Effect or Dragon Age series, games that include several opportunities to initiate same-sex romance. We have identified three different queer playing strategies: imaginative play (queer reading of unspecified or heterosexual characters), stylized performance (the use of gay stereotypes to mark one as queer) and role-playing of a LGBT character. However, players do not seek sexuality in games to the same extent as they do in film or TV, and they tend to use these strategies, and especially the latter two, reluctantly or with reservations. These reservations may be linked to our finding that LGBT players consider their gay (or lesbian) identities disconnected from their identities as players or gamers. This can be explained by the mutual exclusivity of gay communities and the heteronormative game culture.

Studying Human Relatedness through a Shared Gaming Experience

The importance of relatedness in collocated multiplayer video games should not be underestimated. Interpersonal relationships, which develop from social interactions that occur during gameplay, contribute to player motivation and meaningful and memorable experiences for the players. In this study we examined how interpersonal touch within a gameplay experience impacted player motivation and inter-player impressions. Dyads played one of two iPad-based games in three different conditions, one of which required physical contact between the players. Results indicated those in the touch-based conditions scored higher on several measures of intrinsic motivation and impressions of their teammate.

An annotation tool for automatically triangulating individuals’ psychophysiological emotional reactions to digital media stimuli

Current affective user experience studies require both laborious and time-consuming data analysis, as well as dedicated affective classification algorithms. Moreover, the high technical complexity and lack of general guidelines for developing these affective classification algorithms further limits the comparability of the obtained results. In this paper we target this issue by presenting a tool capable of automatically annotating and triangulating players’ physiologically interpreted emotional reactions to in-game events. This tool was initially motivated by an experimental psychology study regarding the emotional habituation effects of audio-visual stimuli in digital games and we expect it to contribute in future similar studies by providing both a deeper and more objective analysis on the affective aspects of user experience. We also hope it will contribute towards the rapid implementation and accessibility of this type of studies by open-sourcing it. Throughout this paper we describe the development and benefits presented by our tool, which include: enabling researchers to conduct objective a posteriori analyses without disturbing the gameplay experience, automating the annotation and emotional response identification process, and formatted data exporting for further analysis in third-party statistical software applications.

A Lexical Approach to Study Computer Games and Game Play Experience via Online Reviews

This article proposes a revised lexical approach to understand characteristics of computer games and user experience in game play by analyzing online game reviews. The lexical approach was originally used by psychologists to study personality traits. It was based on a lexical hypothesis stating that personality traits are reflected in the adjectives people have been using to describe personality over a long time. A factor analysis was then conducted to identify the patterns of personality related adjectives (i.e., personality traits). The argument here is that game players have used natural languages to describe computer games and their experiences over time and that the most important characteristics of computer games and game play experience would be reflected in player language. Therefore, the traits of computer games and user experience during game play can be studied by examining the adjectives used by players in online reviews. Based on 696,801 reviews downloaded from three major game websites, the lexical approach was adapted to analyze textual content pertaining to computer games. In two consecutive studies, the most important factors concerning traits of computer games and game play experience were discovered and analyzed. The implications of the revised lexical approach and findings from this project were discussed.

Learning-Based Procedural Content Generation

Procedural content generation (PCG) has recently become one of the hottest topics in computational intelligence and AI game research. While some substantial progress has been made in this area, there are still several challenges ranging from content evaluation to personalized content generation. In this paper, we present a novel PCG framework based on machine learning, named learning-based procedure content generation (LBPCG), to tackle a number of challenging problems. By exploring and exploiting information gained in game development and public player test, our framework can generate robust content adaptable to end-user or target players on-line with minimal interruption to their gameplay experience. As the data-driven methodology is emphasized in our framework, we develop learning-based enabling techniques to implement the various models required in our framework. For a proof of concept, we have developed a prototype based on the classic open source first-person shooter game, Quake. Simulation results suggest that our framework is promising in generating quality content.

Modality specific assessment of video game player’s experience using the Emotiv

A growing body of literature has emerged that focuses upon cognitive assessment of video game player experience. Given the growing popularity of video gaming and the increasing literature on cognitive aspects of video gamers, there is a growing need for novel approaches to assessment of the cognitive processes that occur while persons are immersed in video games. In this study, we assessed various stimulus modalities and gaming events using an off-the-shelf EEG devise. A significant difference was found among different stimulus modalities with increasingly difficult cognitive demands. Specifically, beta and gamma power were significantly increased during high intensity events when compared to low intensity gaming events. Our findings suggest that the Emotiv EEG can be used to differentiate between varying stimulus modalities and accompanying cognitive processes.

We don’t need no stinkin’ badges: The impact of reward features and feeling rewarded in educational games

Drawing from recent research on the ability of video games to satisfy psychological needs, this paper identifies how the presence of rewards influences learning complex concepts and tasks using an educational video game. We designed and developed two 60-min educational games with and without a range of reward features and examined learning outcomes among 242 participants in university laboratories. Although both games improved learning, analyses suggest that the quantity of in-game rewards did not have an impact on biased behavior avoidance or knowledge about biases. To further illuminate these findings, we examined perceptions of feeling rewarded and found that those who felt more rewarded had more favorable views of the gameplay experience, but they did not demonstrate different learning outcomes.

Game-Play Breakdowns and Breakthroughs: Exploring the Relationship Between Action, Understanding, and Involvement

Game developers have to ensure their games are appealing to, and playable by, a range of people. However, although there has been interest in the game-play experience, we know little about how learning relates to player involvement. This is despite challenge being an integral part of game-play, providing players with potential opportunities to learn. This article reports on a multiple case-study approach that explored how learning and involvement come together in practice. Participants consisted of a mix of gamers and casual players. Data included interviews, multiple observations of game-play, postplay cued interviews, and diary entries. A set of theoretical claims representing suggested relationships between involvement and learning were developed on the basis of previous literature; these were then assessed through a critical examination of the data set. The resulting theory is presented as 14 refined claims that relate to micro and macro involvement; breakdowns and breakthroughs in action, understanding, and involvement; progress; and agency, meaning and compelling game-play. The claims emphasize how players experience learning via breakthroughs in understanding, where involvement is increased when the player feels responsible for progress. Supporting the relationship between learning and involvement is important for ensuring the success of commercial and educational games.

O conceito de “gameplay experience” aplicado à localização de games

The main goal of a video game is to provide fun. In this regard, it is essential to bear in mind the concept of “gameplay experience”, which has to do with providing the players with a pleasant interactive experience that allows them to enjoy a good narrative, defeat an opponent, complete a mission, etc, without having their attention diverted to other factors which could eventually compromise the fun. This paper aims at analyzing the concept of “gameplay experience” under the perspective of video game localization, trying to understand to what extent the translation of a video game may contribute to a more/less pleasant gameplay experience. First, some definitions of the terms “gameplay” (commonly translated as “jogabilidade”) and “gameplay experience” (or “experiencia de jogo”) are discussed, so as to increase the understanding of their various aspects. Next, the concept of “gameplay experience” within the world of video game localization is examined. Finally, some examples taken from the Brazilian versions of some video games are presented in order to see in practice the importance of translation for a more fun gameplay experience.