Max Valentin Birk

Control your game-self: effects of controller type on enjoyment, motivation, and personality in game

Whether they are made to entertain you, or to educate you, good video games engage you. Significant research has tried to understand engagement in games by measuring player experience (PX). Traditionally, PX evaluation has focused on the enjoyment of game, or the motivation of players; these factors no doubt contribute to engagement, but do decisions regarding play environment (e.g., the choice of game controller) affect the player more deeply than that? We apply self-determination theory (specifically satisfaction of needs and self-discrepancy represented using the five factors model of personality) to explain PX in an experiment with controller type as the manipulation. Our study shows that there are a number of effects of controller on PX and in-game player personality. These findings provide both a lens with which to view controller effects in games and a guide for controller choice in the design of new games. Our research demonstrates that including self-characteristics assessment in the PX evaluation toolbox is valuable and useful for understanding player experience.

Fostering Intrinsic Motivation through Avatar Identification in Digital Games

Fostering intrinsic motivation with interactive applications can increase the enjoyment that people experience when using technology, but can also translate into more invested effort. We propose that identifying with an avatar in a game will increase the intrinsic motivation of the player. We analyzed data from 126 participants playing a custom endless runner game and show that similarity identification, embodied identification, and wishful identification increases autonomy, immersion, invested effort, enjoyment, and positive affect. We also show that greater identification translates into motivated behaviour as operationalized by the time that players spent in an unending version of the infinite runner. Important for the design of games for entertainment and serious purposes, we discuss how identification with an avatar can be facilitated to cultivate intrinsic motivation within and beyond games.

Deconstructing the touch experience

In this paper, we evaluate the performance and experience differences between direct touch and mouse input on horizontal and vertical surfaces using a simple application and several validated scales. We find that, not only are both speed and accuracy improved when using the multi-touch display over a mouse, but that participants were happier and more engaged. They also felt more competent, in control, related to other people, and immersed. Surprisingly, these results cannot be explained by the intuitiveness of the controller, and the benefits of touch did not come at the expense of perceived workload. Our work shows the added value of considering experience in addition to traditional measures of performance, and demonstrates an effective and efficient method for gathering experience during inter-action with surface applications. We conclude by discussing how an understanding of this experience can help in designing touch applications.

Modeling Motivation in a Social Network Game Using Player-Centric Traits and Personality Traits

People are drawn to play different types of videogames and find enjoyment in a range of gameplay experiences. Envisaging a representative game player or persona allows game designers to personalize game content; however, there are many ways to characterize players and little guidance on which approaches best model player behavior and preference. To provide knowledge about how player characteristics contribute to game experience, we investigate how personality traits as well as player styles from the BrianHex model moderate the prediction of player motivation with a social network game. Our results show that several player characteristics impact motivation, expressed in terms of enjoyment and effort. We also show that player enjoyment and effort, as predicted by our models, impact players’ in-game behaviors, illustrating both the predictive power and practical utility of our models for guiding user adaptation.

Manipulating Leaderboards to Induce Player Experience

Assessing and inducing player experience (pX) in games user research (GUR) is complicated because of the tradeoff between maintaining rigour through experimental control and having participants feel like they are engaged in play. To establish and evaluate an embedded method for inducing a sense of success or failure in participants during gameplay (e.g., to study how different players exhibit resilience to in-game failure), we manipulated leaderboard position in an experiment in which 155 participants played a Bejeweled clone. We show that manipulating success perception through leaderboards increases the players perception of competence, autonomy, presence, enjoyment, and positive affect over manipulated failure. In addition, displaying the score enhances the effect on positive affect, autonomy and enjoyment, while not increasing detectability.

How players value their characters in world of warcraft

Characters in games such as World of Warcraft allow players to act in the game world and to interact with others. Game characters and avatars are a mediated form of self-representation for the player, but some research suggests that players also view characters in other ways that have to do with the kinds of value that the characters provide. To better understand the ways that players value their characters in an online environment, we carried out a semi-structured interview study of twenty World of Warcraft players. From our data we identify ten kinds of value that characters can provide -- including utility, investment, communication, memory, enjoyment, and representations of relationships, as well as value as an opportunity for experience, creativity, sociability, and self-expression. The analytical lens of value provides a new understanding of the ways that players appreciate characters in online multi-user worlds. Our results can help developers understand and enhance an element of multi-player games that contributes greatly to player experience and satisfaction.

The effects of embodied persuasive games on player attitudes toward people using wheelchairs

People using wheelchairs face barriers in their daily lives, many of which are created by people who surround them. Promoting positive attitudes towards persons with disabilities is an integral step in removing these barriers and improving their quality of life. In this context, persuasive games offer an opportunity of encouraging attitude change. We created a wheelchair-controlled persuasive game to study how embodied interaction can be applied to influence player attitudes over time. Our results show that the game intervention successfully raised awareness for challenges that people using wheelchairs face, and that embodied interaction is a more effective approach than traditional input in terms of retaining attitude change over time. Based on these findings, we provide design strategies for embodied interaction in persuasive games, and outline how our findings can be leveraged to help designers create effective persuasive experiences beyond games.

The Effects of Graphical Fidelity on Player Experience

Graphical assets in video games have become increasingly complex over the years, but little is known about their effect on player experience (PX). In this paper, we present results of a controlled study with 48 participants comparing how abstract and stylized graphics influence player experience in casual games. Our results show that high-fidelity graphics result in a more positive impression of the game. However, we also show that many effects are only present in the game with a more challenging mechanic. This shows that casual games can be compelling and enjoyable to play despite simplistic graphics, suggesting that small game developers and researchers need not focus on elaborate visuals to engage players.

How to Present Game Difficulty Choices?: Exploring the Impact on Player Experience

Matching game difficulty to player ability is a crucial step toward a rewarding player experience, yet making difficulty adjustments that are effective yet unobtrusive can be challenging. This paper examines the impact of automatic and player-initiated difficulty adjustment on player experience through two studies. In the first study, 40 participants played the casual game THYFTHYF either in motion-based or sedentary mode, using menu-based, embedded, or automatic difficulty adjustment. In the second study, we created an adapted version of the commercially available game fl0w to allow us to carry out a more focused study of sedentary casual play. Results from both studies demonstrate that the type of difficulty adjustment has an impact on perceived autonomy, but other player experience measures were not affected as expected. Our findings suggest that most players express a preference for manual difficulty choices, but that overall game experience was not notably impacted by automated difficulty adjustments.

The Effects of Social Exclusion on Play Experience and Hostile Cognitions in Digital Games

The social nature of multiplayer games provides compelling play experiences that are dynamic, unpredictable, and satisfying; however, playing digital games with others can result in feeling socially excluded. There are several known harmful effects of ostracism, including on cognition and the interpretation of social information. To investigate the effects of social exclusion in the context of a multiplayer game, we developed and validated a social exclusion paradigm that we embedded in an online game. Called Operator Challenge, our paradigm influenced feelings of social exclusion and access to hostile cognitions (measured through a word-completion task). In addition, the degree of experienced belonging predicted player enjoyment, effort, and the number of hostile words completed; however, the experience measures did not mediate the relationship between belonging and access to hostile cognitions. Our work facilitates understanding the causes and effects of exclusion, which is important for the study of player experience in multiplayer games.