Loïc Caroux

Player-video game interaction

The nature of player-video game interactions is not clearly defined in the literature.The review showed that several concepts are relevant to qualify these interactions.Player aspects such as engagement and enjoyment are relevant.Video game aspects as input/output, game contents and multiplayer are relevant.Global approaches such as playability are also relevant. Video game design requires a user-centered approach to ensure that the experience enjoyed by players is as good as possible. However, the nature of player-video game interactions has not as yet been clearly defined in the scientific literature. The purpose of the present study was to provide a systematic review of empirical evidences of the current concepts of player-video game interactions in entertainment situations. A total of 72 articles published in scientific journals that deal with human-computer interaction met the criteria for inclusion in the present review. Major findings of these articles were presented in a narrative synthesis. Results showed that player-video game interactions could be defined with multiple concepts that are closely linked and intertwined. These concepts concern player aspects of player-video game interactions, namely engagement and enjoyment, and video game aspects, namely information input/output techniques, game contents and multiplayer games. Global approaches, such as playability, also exist to qualify player-video game interactions. Limitations of these findings are discussed to help researchers to plan future advances of the field and provide supplementary effort to better know the role of less-studied aspects. Practical implications are also discussed to help game designers to optimize the design of player-video game interactions.

Maximizing Players’ Anticipation by Applying the Proximity-Compatibility Principle to the Design of Video Games

Objective: Two experiments were conducted to investigate elements of the spatial design of video game interfaces. Background: In most video games, both the objects and the background scene are moving. Players must pay attention to what appears in the background to anticipate events while looking at head-up displays. According to the proximity-compatibility principle, game-related information should be placed as close as possible to the anticipation zone. Method: Participants played a video game where they had to anticipate the upward movement of obstacles. The score location was manipulated. The average vertical gaze position and dispersion were used to assess anticipation and extent of visual scanning, respectively. Results: Putting the score at the bottom rather than the top of the game window, within the anticipation zone, was expected to minimize attentional moves. Experiment 1 revealed lower average gaze positions and reduced extent of visual scanning in that condition, but the score performance did not improve significantly. Experiment 2 demonstrated that players’ performance increased compared with the bottom condition when the score was displayed just below but outside the game window, despite an increased extent of visual scanning. Conclusion: Positioning the score just outside the anticipation zone facilitated anticipation of the movement of obstacles and led to better performance than when the score overlapped with the game anticipation zone. Application: For games requiring visual anticipation, contextual information should be located in the direction of anticipation but not within the anticipation zone. This recommendation complements the proximity compatibility principle for simple dynamic displays.

Verification of daily activities of older adults: a simple, non-intrusive, low-cost approach

This paper presents an approach to verifying the activities of daily living of older adults at their home. We verify activities, instead of inferring them, because our monitoring approach is driven by routines, initially sketched by users in their environment. Monitoring is supported by a lightweight sensor infrastructure, comprising non-intrusive, low-cost, wireless devices. Verification is performed by applying a simple formula to sensor log data, for each activity of interest. The result value determines whether an activity has been performed. We have conducted an experimental study to validate our approach. To do so, four participants have been monitored during five days at their home, equipped with sensors. When applied to the log data, our formulas were able to automatically verify that a list of activities were performed. They produced the same interpretations, using Signal Detection Theory, as a third party, manually analyzing the log data.

Impairment of Shooting Performance by Background Complexity and Motion

In many visual displays such as virtual environments, human tasks involve objects superimposed on both complex and moving backgrounds. However, most studies investigated the influence of background complexity or background motion in isolation. Two experiments were designed to investigate the joint influences of background complexity and lateral motion on a simple shooting task typical of video games. Participants had to perform the task on the moving and static versions of backgrounds of three levels of complexity, while their eye movements were recorded. The backgrounds displayed either an abstract (Experiment 1) or a naturalistic (Experiment 2) virtual environment. The results showed that performance was impaired by background motion in both experiments. The effects of motion and complexity were additive for the abstract background and multiplicative for the naturalistic background. Eye movement recordings showed that performance impairments reflected at least in part the impact of the background visual features on gaze control.

Investigating memory constraints on recall of options in interactive voice response system messages

This study examined the effects of the number of options in a message and different message endings on the memorisation of multiple-option messages. Twenty-seven participants were told to pay attention to the quality of interactions between users and an interactive voice response system and were asked to recall system messages. The multiple-option messages contained three, five or seven options and ended either in a pseudoword suffix, in a natural-language prompt or in a beep. Results showed that option recall was impaired when messages were longer and contained a suffix. The interaction between the number of options and the presence of a suffix was not significant. Results also showed that, in messages with five or more options, the recency effect was greater than the primacy effect. These results bolster our knowledge about the design of spoken menus.

How visual background motion and task difficulty modulate players’ performance in a shooting task

In many virtual environments, such as those of video games, the scene background moves to give the illusion of movement. In the present study, two experiments were designed to investigate the combined impact of lateral background motion and task difficulty on players’ performance in a target-shooting task. Participants had to perform the task on either the moving or the stationary version of a patterned background that was either green (Experiment 1) or black-and-white (Experiment 2). The difficulty of the task was manipulated by varying the number of visual features shared between the target and distractor items. In accordance with the literature, the participants’ performance was worse, and the number and duration of participants’ fixations increased when the task was difficult. Background motion had an additive, negative impact on performance. When the background was black-and-white, background motion had an impact only when the task was easy but not when it was difficult. Design recommendations based on manipulations of the background characteristics are proposed to establish the level of difficulty in simple video games that use lateral background motion.