[:en]Designing and developing video games is a challenging and demanding process. Developers must create a game that is enjoyable and rewarding to a diverse audience of players to ensure the product garners financial success. Thus, understanding how different players interact and behave during gameplay is of vital importance. An accurate understanding of target players and their gameplay experience can help to identify and resolve potential problem areas during development, leading to a better player experience and arguably greater game review scores and sales.

According to the recent Entertainment Software Association (ESA) report, over the past few decades the video games market has increased as part of the entertainment industry. In addition to its rapidly growing market share, there are other factors that make video games a popular topic for exploration including new business models, widening player demographics, and new controller interfaces and platforms. These present opportunities, but also additional uncertainties. When combined with escalating design and development costs for large-scale titles, it is critical that developers ensure every game is a success in the marketplace. Put simply, the opportunity is the wider market; the challenge is that new demographics or platforms require a deeper understanding of players to appeal to this market. Generally, the industry is moving away from a single player stereotype (for instance, the stereotypical image of a teenage boy who plays games for many hours per day on a game console) to the new reality in which multiple ubiquitous gamers play across locations and mobile platforms. Modern video games offer different ways of interaction and the potential to deliver a better player experience.

The emerging field of Games User Research (GUR) seeks to improve the gameplay experience by conducting usability and UX evaluation on under- development titles. GUR is a field that borrows user research methods—such as behavioral observation, interview, questionnaire, and heuristic evaluation—from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and psychology. Although user research methods have made progress in understanding the usability of productivity applications, applying these methods to video games is still a challenge for practitioners and researchers. Due to the specific characteristics of video games (Table 1), most of the well-established user research methods cannot be used in the same way for formative evaluation of the player experience.

Table 1. Differences between games and productivity applications (based on Pagulayan et al in “User-centered Design in Games” (Handbook for Human-Computer Interaction in Interactive Systems, 2003).

Hence, user research methods have been adapted and evolved to better fit with game development needs. These methods aim to provide a mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches for games user researchers to choose from, depending on their user study setup and needs. Identifying the best mixture of these methods, and blending the results from each into a meaningful report for game developers, is one of the current challenges facing UX and usability evaluation in games. At the GUR Summit 2012, Bill Fulton discussed an evaluation framework for conducting game usability and UX studies with a focus on formative evaluation (Table 2).

Table 2. Criteria for applied usability and UX evaluation on games (based on http://vimeo.com/groups/gursig/videos/26733185)

As Table 2 shows, evaluation methodologies influence the success of every GUR study in a significant way. However, the usual methods of determining the player experience are based on self-reporting methods. Although these are relatively easy to conduct and can potentially provide a rich source of data, they rely heavily on players’ awareness of the experience, ability to recall it, and their cognitive skills to explain that experience.

In order to address these issues, Games UX researchers are using a number of innovative techniques to enhance user studies, better understand players’ experience, and develop new methods of communicating user test findings to the game development team. There is an increased interest in approaches such as physiological measurements and behavioral analytics to supplement traditional UX evaluation methods for games.

Physiological measurements or biometrics refer to the capture and analysis of signals directly from the user’s body, often using skin-contact sensors that show how different users react to events or stimuli on the screen. Since physiological evaluation measures visceral biological responses, they are instinctive and hard to fake. Game user researchers also leverage the use of behavioral analytics to better understand players’ actions and behavior by collecting large amounts of data regarding player movement, interactions, or position (progress) in the game world. These data can enable the analysis of long-term player behavior, which would be particularly useful for ensuring balancing issues. These issues may not be easily detected by classic user testing approaches, especially during short test sessions.

Another challenge in studying the player experience is tying together the results of quantitative and qualitative user research data. For example, combining data from players’ physiological measures with questionnaire or interview results and in-game movement data into a single report is not straightforward because the underlying data is often in different formats. Visualization techniques can facilitate the understanding of relationships among these data sets, and various visualization techniques have been introduced in game UX. However, most of these techniques focus on displaying large amounts of data captured directly via telemetry without integrating qualitative or contextual data about players’ emotional experience. Hence, a potential advancement would be to develop a new visualization technique that can triangulate the above mentioned mixed data sources.

Figure 1 shows one approach that took a step towards solving this challenge. In the visualization, an excerpt from a level of a popular 2D platform game is displaying players’ movement data, their verbal comments from interviews, and their physiological data in one combined visualization. The overall hue of the paths gives an impression of the arousal of the players (measured utilizing a physiological sensor) at certain points of a level. For example, in area A the paths are mostly yellowish, which indicates low arousal. This is a safe area as there are no enemies or gaps that can lead to immediate death in case a jump goes wrong. In contrast, the paths in area B are mostly red, which signifies high arousal, presumably because players had to cross two gaps while simultaneously fighting an enemy located on the platform in-between. Similarly, a huge gap in area C that needs to be crossed with a long jump, also caused a higher level of arousal in players. Interestingly, judging from the player trails, the jump itself seems to be quite easy as none of the players fell to their death at that point. In this sense, the visualization provides insights to designers regarding how they might tweak the pacing of the game. For example, it might suggest that they alternate high intensity jump areas with periods of recovery.

Figure 1. Visualization excerpt shows a level of a popular 2D platform game. The overall hue of the paths conveys areas with high (mostly reddish paths, B and C) and low (mostly yellowish paths, A) player arousal. (Image created by Guenter Wallner)

To summarize, game development is a complex, costly, and lengthy process that requires developers make creative and novel design decisions while satisfying new, diverse markets. It’s critical for developers to receive feedback from their target audience on their experience with games and how they might be improved. However, player behavior is often studied based on subjective reporting and observational approaches, and may not include the emotional component of gameplay. Approaches such as physiological measurements and behavioral analytics have the potential to provide continuous monitoring of a player’s affective state without interrupting the player. Combining these measures with other user research data sources, and identifying the elements to change, is a lingering challenge that must be addressed to enhance design decisions in game development

文章全文为英文版[:KO]게임 개발에는 UX 평가가 포함되지만, 비디오 게임은 다른 적용 사례와는 다릅니다. 그 결과, UX 평가 방법은 성공적인 게임 설계의 어려움에 잘 대처할 수 있도록 주의를 기울여 선택해야 합니다. 게임 사용자 연구원들은 게임 플레이 경험을 더욱 효과적으로 이해하고 전달하기 위해서 갈수록 생리학적 측정법(생물측정법), 행동분석학, 그리고 시각화 기법을 이용하는 방법으로 실험을 하고 있습니다.

전체 기사는 영어로만 제공됩니다.[:pt]O desenvolvimento de jogos inclui a avaliação da experiência do usuário, mas os videogames são diferentes de outros aplicativos. Assim, os métodos de avaliação da experiência do usuário precisam ser escolhidos com cuidado para atender ao desafio de projetar um jogo de sucesso. Os Pesquisadores de Usuário de Jogos estão testando um número maior de abordagens que usam medições (biométricas) fisiológicas, análises comportamentais e técnicas de visualização, para compreender e comunicar experiências da prática de jogo com mais eficiência.

O artigo completo está disponível somente em inglês.[:ja]ゲーム開発にはUX評価が含まれるが、ビデオゲームは他のアプリケーションとは異なる。このため、成功するゲームのデザインにおける課題に対処するには、UXの評価方法を慎重に選ぶ必要がある。ゲームプレイ体験をより効果的に理解し伝達するために、ゲームユーザー調査では、生理学的測定（バイオメトリクス）、行動分析、視覚化のテクニックを用いるアプローチの試用が増加している。

原文は英語だけになります[:es]El desarrollo de un juego incluye una evaluación de la experiencia del usuario. No obstante, los videojuegos son diferentes de otras aplicaciones. En consecuencia, los métodos de evaluación de la experiencia del usuario deben seleccionarse cuidadosamente, con el objeto de superar los desafíos que representa el diseño de un juego exitoso. Los investigadores de los usuarios de juegos experimentan cada vez más con enfoques que emplean mediciones fisiológicas (la biométrica), análisis de comportamiento y técnicas de visualización, a fin de comprender y comunicar experiencias de juego de manera más efectiva.

La versión completa de este artículo está sólo disponible en inglés

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Topics: Usability Testing, Games
Published in: April, 2015 in Trends in UX

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