Hannu Korhonen

The Pokémon GO Experience: A Location-Based Augmented Reality Mobile Game Goes Mainstream

Pokémon GO is a location-based augmented reality mobile game based on the Pokémon franchise. After the game was launched globally in July 2016, it quickly became the most successful mobile game in both popularity and revenue generation at the time, and the first location-based augmented reality game to reach a mainstream status. We explore the game experiences through a qualitative survey (n=1000) in Finland focusing on the positive and the negative aspects of Pokémon GO as told by the players. The positive experiences are related to movement, sociability, game mechanics, and brand while the negative experiences emerge from technical problems, unequal gaming opportunities, bad behavior of other players and non-players, and unpolished game design. Interestingly, the augmented reality features, safety issues or the free-to-play revenue model did not receive considerable feedback. The findings are useful for academics and industry practitioners for studying and designing location-based augmented reality game experiences.

Exploring playability of social network games

Social network games in Facebook are played by millions of players on daily basis. Due to their design characteristics, new challenges for game design and playability evaluations arise. We present a study where 18 novice inspectors evaluated a social game using playability heuristics. The objective is to explore possible domain-specific playability problems and to examine how the established heuristics suit for evaluating social games. The results from this study show that some implementations of the social games design characteristics can cause playability problems and that the established heuristics are suitable for evaluating social games. The study also revealed that inspectors had problems in interpreting cause and effect of the found problems.

Investigating mid-air gestures and handhelds in motion tracked environments

Smart spaces with multiple interactive devices and motion tracking capabilities are becoming more common. However, there is little research on how interaction with one device affects the usage of other devices in the space. We investigate the effects of mobile devices and physical interactive devices on gestural interaction in motion-tracked environments. For our user study, we built a smart space consisting of a gesture-controlled large display, an NFC reader and a mobile device, to simulate a system in which users can transfer information between the space and personal devices. The study with 13 participants revealed that (1) the mobile device affects gesturing as well as passive stance; (2) users may stop moving completely when they intend to stop interacting with a display; (3) interactive devices with overlapping interaction space make unintentional interaction significantly more frequent. Our findings give implications for gestural interaction design as well as design of motion-tracked smart spaces.

Common playability problems in social network games

Social network games on Facebook have become a popular genre of video games. Social network integration and the free-to-play revenue model make them easily accessible but also easy to discard. In such an ecosystem, the quality of the game plays an important part. Improving playability is one method for achieving higher quality game experiences which might in turn lead to better retention and monetization. In this work-in-progress paper, we examine 12 social games and present the ten most common problem categories featuring game usability, gameplay and platform related playability problems.