Evaluating User Experience in Games: Concepts and Methods

Description

User Experience has become a major research area in human-computer interaction. The area of game design and development has been focusing on user experience evaluation for the last 20 years, although a clear definition of user experience is still to be established. The contributors to this volume explore concepts that enhance the overall user experience in games such as fun, playability, flow, immersion and many others. Presenting an overview of current practice from academia and industry in game development, the book shows a variety of methods that can be used to evaluate user experience in games, not only during game-play but also before and after the game play. Evaluating User Experiences in Games: Presents a broad range of user experience evaluation methods and concepts; Provides insights on when to apply the various user experience evaluation methods in the development cycle and shows how methods can be also applied to a more general HCI context; Includes new research on evaluating user experience during game play and after; and social play; Describes new evaluation methods; Details methods that are also applicable for exertion games or tabletop games. This comprehensive book will be welcomed by researchers and practitioners in the field. Front Matter....Pages i-xxviii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 User Experience Evaluation in Entertainment....Pages 3-7 Front Matter....Pages 9-9 Enabling Social Play: A Framework for Design and Evaluation....Pages 11-22 Presence, Involvement, and Flow in Digital Games....Pages 23-46 Assessing the Core Elements of the Gaming Experience....Pages 47-71 The Life and Tools of a Games Designer....Pages 73-87 Investigating Experiences and Attitudes Toward Videogames Using a Semantic Differential Methodology....Pages 89-105 Video Game Development and User Experience....Pages 107-128 Front Matter....Pages 129-129 User Experience Design for Inexperienced Gamers: GAP – Game Approachability Principles....Pages 131-147 Digital Games, the Aftermath: Qualitative Insights into Postgame Experiences....Pages 149-163 Evaluating User Experience Factors Using Experiments: Expressive Artificial Faces Embedded in Contexts....Pages 165-183 Front Matter....Pages 185-185 Evaluating Exertion Games....Pages 187-207 Beyond the Gamepad: HCI and Game Controller Design and Evaluation....Pages 209-219 Using Heuristics to Evaluate the Overall User Experience of Video Games and Advanced Interaction Games....Pages 233-256 Back Matter....Pages 257-258