skip to main content
10.1145/1920778.1920787acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesfutureplayConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Critical review on video game evaluation heuristics: social games perspective

Published: 06 May 2010 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents the first step in creating design and evaluation heuristics for social games which emerge from the domain of social media. Initial high level heuristics for social games are offered by reviewing four existing video game heuristic models and analyzing two social games design frameworks.

References

[1]
AppData. 2010. Application Leaderboard for Facebook. Online: http://www.appdata.com/
[2]
Baker, K. Greenberg, S. and Gutwin, C. 2002. Empirical Development of a Heuristic Evaluation Methodology for Shared Workspace Groupware. Proc. of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 96--105.
[3]
Bogost, I. 2004. Asynchronous Multiplay: Futures for Casual Multiplayer Experience. Other Player Conference, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
[4]
Carless, S. 2009. GDC Austin: Zynga's Reynolds On Social Game Design's Evolution. Gamasutra News. Online: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25332
[5]
Clanton, C. An Interpreted Demonstration of Computer Game Design. Proc. of of CHI 1998, 1--2. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/286498.286499
[6]
Desurvire, H., Caplan, M. and Toth, J. A. 2004. Using Heuristics to Evaluate the Payability of Games. Proc. of ACM SIGCHI '04 Extended Abstracts, 1509--1512. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985921.986102
[7]
Desurvire, H. and Wiberg, C. 2009. Game Usability Heuristics (PLAY) for Evaluating and Designing Better Games: The Next Iteration. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5621/2009, 557--556. Online: http://www.springerlink.com/content/cl1w171p067k39q1/
[8]
Dybwad. B. 2010. Facebook Passes the 400 Million User Mark. Mashable. Online: http://mashable.com/2010/02/04/facebook-400-million/
[9]
Egenfield-Nielsen, S., Smith, J. H. and Tosca, S. P. 2008. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. Routledge.
[10]
Falstein, N. and Barwood, H. 2006. The 400 Project. Online: http://theinspiracy.com/400_project.htm.
[11]
Fabricatore, C., Nussbaum, M., Rosas, R. 2002. Playability in Action Videogames: A Qualitative Design Model. Human-Computer Interaction 17, 311--368. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327051HCI1704_1
[12]
Federoff, M. A. 2002. Heuristics and Usability Guidelines for the Creation and Evaluation of Fun in Video Games. Master's Thesis. Department of Telecommunications, Master of Science. Indiana University, Indiana.
[13]
GP Bullhound. 2010. Social Gaming: The Fastest Growing Segment in the Games Market. Online: http://www.gpbullhound.com/researchpdf/GPB%20Social%20Gaming%20Report%20-%20March%202010%20%283%29.pdf
[14]
Gray, W. D. and Salzman, M. 1998. Damaged Merchandise? A Review of Experiments That Compare Usability Evaluation Methods. Human-Computer Interaction 13 (3), 203--261.
[15]
Holopainen, J., Korhonen, H., Ollila, E., Nenonen, V., Björk, S., Peitz, J. and Davidsson, O. 2008. Design Kit: Massively Multiplayer Mobile Phone Games. IPerG Deliverable D5.10. Online: http://iperg.sics.se/Deliverables/D5.10.pdf
[16]
ISO. 1998. ISO 9241--11 Ergonomic Requirements for Office Work with Visual Display Terminals (VDTs), Part 11: Guidance on usability. ISO International Standard.
[17]
Järvinen, A. 2009. Game Design for Social Networks. Interaction Design for Playful Dispositions. Proc. of the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1581073.1581088
[18]
Järvinen, A., Heliö, S., Mäyrä, F. 2002. Communication and Community in Digital Entertainment Services. University of Tampere.
[19]
Korhonen, H. and Koivisto, E. M. I. 2006. Playability Heuristics for Mobile Games. Proc. of the 8th Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, 9--16. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1152215.1152218
[20]
Korhonen, H. and Koivisto, E. M. I. 2007 Playability Heuristics for Mobile Multi-Player Games. Proc. of the 2nd International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts, 28--35. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1306813.1306828
[21]
Korhonen, H., Paavilainen, J. and Saarenpää, H. 2009. Expert Review Method in Game Evaluations -- Comparison of Two Playability Heuristic Sets. Proc. of the 13th International MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era, 74--81. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1621841.1621856
[22]
Kuittinen, J., Kultima, A., Niemelä, J. and Paavilainen, J. 2007. Casual Games Discussion. Proc. of the 2007 conference on Future Play, 105--112. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1328202.1328221
[23]
Kultima, A., Niemelä, J., Paavilainen, J. and Saarenpää, H. 2008. Designing Game Idea Generation Games. Proc. of the 2008 conference for Future Play, 137--144. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1496984.1497007
[24]
Köffel, C. and Haller, M. 2008. Heuristics for the Evaluation of Tabletop Games. Evaluating User Experiences in Games, Workshop at the 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
[25]
Köffel, C., Hochleitner, W., Leitner, J., Haller, M, Geven, A. and Tscheligi, M. 2010. Using Heuristics to Evaluate the Overall User Experience of Video Games and Advanced Interaction Games. In Bernhaupt, R (Ed.) Evaluating User Experience in Games. Springer.
[26]
Laakkonen, J. 2009. Facebook Policy Changes Are a Tectonic Shift for Social Game Developers. Sombiz. Online: http://www.sombiz.net/content/facebook-policy-changes-are-tectonic-shift-social-game-developers
[27]
Ling, C. and Salvendy, G. 2005. Extension of Heuristic Evaluation Method: A Review and Reappraisal. Ergonomia 27 (3), 179--197.
[28]
Malone, T. W. 1980. What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games. Proc. of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL Symposium and the First SIGPC Symposium on Small Systems, 162--169.
[29]
Malone, T. W. 1982. Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games. Proc. of ACM SIGCHI, 63--68. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/800049.801756
[30]
Mayer, A. 2009. Ten Reasons that Social Games May Eat the Casual Market. Inside Social Games. Online: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/02/10/ten-reasons-that-social-games-may-eat-the-casual-market/
[31]
Miller, G. A. 1956. The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information. The Psychological Review 63. 81--97.
[32]
Nieborg, D. B. and Sihvonen, T. 2009. The New Gatekeepers: The Occupational Ideology of Game Journalism. Proc. of DiGRA 2009. Online: http://www.digra.org:8080/Plone/dl/db/09287.29284.pdf
[33]
Nielsen, J. and Molich, R. 1990. Heuristic Evaluation of User Interfaces. Proc. of ACM SIGCHI, 249--256. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/97243.97281
[34]
Nielsen, J. 1994. Heuristic Evaluation. In Nielsen, J. and Mark, R. L. (Eds.) Usability Inspection Methods. New York, NY, USA: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
[35]
Nielsen, J. 2005. Ten Usability Heuristics. Useit.com. Online: http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html
[36]
Nokia. 2006. Mobile Game Playability Heuristics. Online: http://bit.ly/nokia_heuristics_pdf
[37]
Nokia. 2010. Mobile Game Playability Heuristics. Forum.Nokia.com. Online: http://bit.ly/nokia_heuristics
[38]
Pinelle, D., Wong, N., Stach, T. 2008. Heuristic Evaluation for Games: Usability Principles for Video Game Design. Proc. of ACM SIGCHI, 1453--1462. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1357054.1357282
[39]
Pinelle, D., Wong, N., Stach, T. and Gutwin, C. 2009. Usability Heuristics for Networked Multiplayer Games. Proc. of the ACM 2009 International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 169--178. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1531674.1531700
[40]
Rao, V. 2008. Facebook Applications and Playful Mood: The Construction of Facebook as "Third Place". Proc. of the 12th international conference on Entertainment and media in the ubiquitous era, 8--12. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1457199.1457202
[41]
Schaffer, N. 2007. Heuristics for Usability in Games. White Paper. Online: http://www.playerfriendly.com/files/hcuristics.pdf
[42]
Stenros, J., Paavilainen, J. and Mäyrä, F. 2009. The Many Faces of Sociability and Social Play in Games. Proc. of the 13th International MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era, 82--89. DOI= http://doi.acm.Org/10.1145/1621841.1621857
[43]
Ventrice, T. 2009. Building the Foundation of a Social Future. Gamesutra Feature. Online: http://www.gamasutra.eom/view/feature/4210./building_the_foundation_of_a_.php
[44]
Wiberg, C., Jegers, K. and Desurvire, H. 2009. How Applicable is Your Evaluation Methods -- Really? Analysis and Re-design of Evaluation Methods for Fun and Entertainment. Proc. of the 2009 Second International Conferences on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, 324--328.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Rules for Expectation: Learning to Generate Rules via Social Environment ModelingIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology10.1109/TCSVT.2023.333452634:8(6874-6887)Online publication date: Aug-2024
  • (2024)Smartphone Games Heuristics (SmGH) – Towards a Standard Set of Platform-Centric Heuristic for Smartphone Games EvaluationInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2356911(1-22)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2024
  • (2023)How Gamified Are Sustainable Food Apps? Applying the Gameful Design Heuristics to Evaluate Sustainable Food AppsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110557:CHI PLAY(919-947)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Critical review on video game evaluation heuristics: social games perspective

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Other conferences
    Futureplay '10: Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology
    May 2010
    282 pages
    ISBN:9781450302357
    DOI:10.1145/1920778
    • Conference Chairs:
    • Bill Kapralos,
    • Andrew Hogue,
    • Simon Xu
    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]

    Sponsors

    • Algoma University College

    In-Cooperation

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 06 May 2010

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. evaluation
    2. heuristics
    3. payability
    4. social games
    5. usability
    6. video games

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    Futureplay '10
    Sponsor:
    Futureplay '10: Futureplay '10 @ GDC Canada
    May 6 - 7, 2010
    British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)41
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
    Reflects downloads up to 15 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Rules for Expectation: Learning to Generate Rules via Social Environment ModelingIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology10.1109/TCSVT.2023.333452634:8(6874-6887)Online publication date: Aug-2024
    • (2024)Smartphone Games Heuristics (SmGH) – Towards a Standard Set of Platform-Centric Heuristic for Smartphone Games EvaluationInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2356911(1-22)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2024
    • (2023)How Gamified Are Sustainable Food Apps? Applying the Gameful Design Heuristics to Evaluate Sustainable Food AppsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110557:CHI PLAY(919-947)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
    • (2023)A Scoping Review of Heuristics in Videos Games Research: Definitions, Development, Application, and OperationalisationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110357:CHI PLAY(402-424)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Mathmages: e-Sports and Mathematics in the Amazon RegionHCI in Games10.1007/978-3-031-35979-8_7(94-104)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2023
    • (2022)Barriers to Expertise in Citizen Science GamesProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517541(1-25)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
    • (2021)Heuristic And Think Aloud Method To Evaluate The Low Fidelity Prototype Of Game-Based Language Learning Application2021 International Conference on Innovative Computing (ICIC)10.1109/ICIC53490.2021.9693022(1-10)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2021
    • (2021)Heuristic Evaluation of a Mobile Game Developed to Help Battle the Pandemic2021 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG52621.2021.9619103(1-8)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2021
    • (2020)Influences upon social media adoption and changes to training delivery in vocational education institutionsJournal of Vocational Education & Training10.1080/13636820.2020.182175474:4(619-644)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2020
    • (2020)Components of game experience: An automatic text analysis of online reviewsEntertainment Computing10.1016/j.entcom.2019.10033833(100338)Online publication date: Mar-2020
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media