Player Experience
In computer science, the concept of user experience has proven to be beneficial in order to improve the quality of interaction between software and its users, by taking users’ emotions and attitudes into account. In general, user experience focuses on int
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Player Experience Josef Wiemeyer, Lennart Nacke, Christiane Moser and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller
Abstract
In computer science, the concept of user experience has proven to be beneficial in order to improve the quality of interaction between software and its users, by taking users’ emotions and attitudes into account. In general, user experience focuses on interaction. As not only interaction (e.g., good usability) is of importance for players, this chapter discusses how the concept of user experience can not only be applied to serious games, but also how it can be extended in order to cover the characteristics of games as a special software. For this refined concept, the term player experience has been coined. First, the concept of player experience is introduced in this chapter. The adequate conceptualization of player experience requires differentiating specific dimensions like (game-) flow, immersion, challenge, tension, competence, and emotions. Because of the individual nature of player experience, psychological models need to be used for the conceptualization as they are able to reflect this multidimensional structure. In addition, interdisciplinary models are needed in order to address the various factors influencing player experience. This ensures a holistic approach. Second, the question how to measure player experience is discussed. Here, different levels
J. Wiemeyer (&) Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] L. Nacke University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada C. Moser University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria F. ‘Floyd’ Mueller RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 R. Dörner et al. (eds.), Serious Games, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40612-1_9
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have to be distinguished: Behavior, physiological reactions, and subjective experience. Finally, it is shown how knowledge about player experience can be employed to develop serious games systematically and to improve their quality.
9.1
Introduction
According to their double mission characterized in Chap. 1, serious games have to accomplish at least two goals: on the one hand entertainment and on the other hand the characterizing goal(s). The entertainment goal will be addressed in this chapter, whereas Chap. 10 will deal with the characterizing goal(s). Experiencing a serious game as a “game” is a personal and individual matter. According to Huizinga (2013), playing games has a different meaning in different cultures. In Chap. 1, gaming or ludus (rule-based) has been distinguished from playing or paidea (free). The individual and personal experience of gaming comprises numerous aspects, for example, intrinsically motivated actions (free of external determination), performing symbolic or fictional actions in a quasi-real context constrained by the rules of a game, ambivalence and openness to both procedure and outcomes, presence and immersion etc. All these aspects refer primarily to the (socio-)psychological experience of the players. Ther
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