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User Experience Research & Design in Games

You are here: Home / Publications / Feedback-Based Gameplay Metrics: Measuring Player Experience via Automatic Visual Analysis

Feedback-Based Gameplay Metrics: Measuring Player Experience via Automatic Visual Analysis

April 18, 2021 by

by Raphaël Marczak, Jasper van Vught, Gareth Schott, Lennart E Nacke
Abstract:
Using gameplay metrics to articulate player interaction within game systems has received increased interest in game studies. The value of gameplay metrics comes from a desire to empirically validate over a decade of theorization of player experience and knowledge of games as ludic systems. Taking gameplay metrics beyond formalized user testing (i.e. with the aim of improving a product) allows researchers the freedom of examining any commercially available game without the need to have access to the game’s source code. This paper offers a new methodology to obtain data on player behavior, achieved through analyzing video and audio streams. Game interface features are being analyzed automatically, which are indicative of player behavior and gameplay events. This paper outlines the development of this methodology and its application to research that seeks to understand the nature of engagement and player motivations.
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Reference:
Feedback-Based Gameplay Metrics: Measuring Player Experience via Automatic Visual Analysis (Raphaël Marczak, Jasper van Vught, Gareth Schott, Lennart E Nacke), In Proceedings of ACM IE 2012, ACM, 2012.
Bibtex Entry:
@inproceedings{marczak2012feedback,
abstract = {Using gameplay metrics to articulate player interaction within game systems has received increased interest in game studies. The value of gameplay metrics comes from a desire to empirically validate over a decade of theorization of player experience and knowledge of games as ludic systems. Taking gameplay metrics beyond formalized user testing (i.e. with the aim of improving a product) allows researchers the freedom of examining any commercially available game without the need to have access to the game's source code. This paper offers a new methodology to obtain data on player behavior, achieved through analyzing video and audio streams. Game interface features are being analyzed automatically, which are indicative of player behavior and gameplay events. This paper outlines the development of this methodology and its application to research that seeks to understand the nature of engagement and player motivations.},
address = {Auckland, New Zealand},
author = {Marczak, Rapha"{e}l and van Vught, Jasper and Schott, Gareth and Nacke, Lennart E},
booktitle = {Proceedings of ACM IE 2012},
doi = {10.1145/2336727.2336733},
organization = {ACM},
pages = {6},
publisher = {ACM},
title = {{Feedback-Based Gameplay Metrics: Measuring Player Experience via Automatic Visual Analysis}},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2336727.2336733},
year = {2012}
}

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