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Using genres to customize usability evaluations of video games

Published: 03 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Video games are varied, with vastly different visual layouts and interaction styles; however, most games that share a common genre still have many user interface similarities. These similarities suggest that genres can be used as a conceptual framework for examining design issues in video games, and for developing a deeper understanding of how the design process can be specialized for specific types of games. In this paper, we consider how genre relates to one aspect of design---the usability of games, which deals with players' ability to learn, control, and understand a game interface. We report results from a study where we coded usability problems in reviews of 108 commercial video games. The review set included 18 games from each of six major game genres. We statistically analyzed the problems from each genre, and found significant differences between many of the genres. We present usability profiles for each genre based on the problem distributions that we found. The profiles describe both common and infrequent problems in each genre and provide details on how they commonly occur in games. The profiles can be used to specialize usability evaluations by helping designers focus on common problems seen in games from each genre.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
Future Play '08: Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share
November 2008
297 pages
ISBN:9781605582184
DOI:10.1145/1496984
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 03 November 2008

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Author Tags

  1. game genres
  2. heuristic evaluation
  3. usability evaluation
  4. video games

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FuturePlay08
FuturePlay08: FuturePlay 2008 Academic Games Conference
November 3 - 5, 2008
Ontario, Toronto, Canada

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  • (2024)Training and Certification of Competences through Serious GamesComputers10.3390/computers1308020113:8(201)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
  • (2022)Echoing the Gameplay: Analyzing Gameplay Sessions across Genres by Reconstructing Them from Recorded DataInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2021.201623739:1(52-84)Online publication date: 3-Jan-2022
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