by Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Lennart E Nacke, John Gregory, Nick Collins, Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Abstract:
Improving game design is a hard task. Few methods are available in games user research (GUR) to test formally how game designs work for players. In particular, the usefulness of user tests (UTs) for game designers has not been fully studied in the CHI community. We propose a novel GUR method called Biometric Storyboards (BioSt) and present a study demonstrating how a Classic UT and a BioSt UT both help designers create a better gameplay experience. In addition, we show that BioSt can help designers deliver significantly better visuals, more fun, and higher gameplay quality than designing without UTs and that classic UTs do not provide this significant advantage. Our interviews support the idea that BioSt provides more nuanced game design improvement. The design implication is that a game designed with the BioSt method will result in high gameplay quality.
Reference:
How Does It Play Better? Exploring User Testing and Biometric Storyboards in Games User Research (Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Lennart E Nacke, John Gregory, Nick Collins, Geraldine Fitzpatrick), In , ACM, 2013.
Bibtex Entry:
@inproceedings{mirza2013does,
abstract = {Improving game design is a hard task. Few methods are available in games user research (GUR) to test formally how game designs work for players. In particular, the usefulness of user tests (UTs) for game designers has not been fully studied in the CHI community. We propose a novel GUR method called Biometric Storyboards (BioSt) and present a study demonstrating how a Classic UT and a BioSt UT both help designers create a better gameplay experience. In addition, we show that BioSt can help designers deliver significantly better visuals, more fun, and higher gameplay quality than designing without UTs and that classic UTs do not provide this significant advantage. Our interviews support the idea that BioSt provides more nuanced game design improvement. The design implication is that a game designed with the BioSt method will result in high gameplay quality.},
address = {Paris, France},
author = {Mirza-Babaei, Pejman and Nacke, Lennart E and Gregory, John and Collins, Nick and Fitzpatrick, Geraldine},
doi = {10.1145/2470654.2466200},
journal = {Proceedings of CHI 2013},
pages = {1499--1508},
publisher = {ACM},
title = {{How Does It Play Better? Exploring User Testing and Biometric Storyboards in Games User Research}},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466200},
year = {2013}
}