The study of expertise is difficult to do in a laboratory environment due to the challenge of finding people at different skill levels and the lack of time for participants to acquire mastery. In this paper, we report on two studies that analyze naturalistic gameplay data using cohort analysis to better understand how skill relates to practice and habit. Two cohorts are analyzed, each from two different games (Halo Reach and StarCraft 2). Our work follows skill progression through 7 months of Halo matches for a holistic perspective, but also explores low-level in-game habits when controlling game units in StarCraft 2. Players who played moderately frequently without long breaks were able to gain skill the most efficiently. What set the highest performers apart was their ability to gain skill more rapidly and without dips compared to other players. At the beginning of matches, top players habitually warmed up by selecting and re-selecting groups of units repeatedly in a meaningless cycle. They exhibited unique routines during their play that aided them when under pressure.
Video games are primarily designed for the players. However, video game spectating is also a popular activity, boosted by the rise of online video sites and major gaming tournaments. In this paper, we focus on the spectator, who is emerging as an important stakeholder in video games. Our study focuses on Starcraft, a popular real-time strategy game with millions of spectators and high level tournament play. We have collected over a hundred stories of the Starcraft spectator from online sources, aiming for as diverse a group as possible. We make three contributions using this data: i) we find nine personas in the data that tell us who the spectators are and why they spectate; ii) we strive to understand how different stakeholders, like commentators, players, crowds, and game designers, affect the spectator experience; and iii) we infer from the spectators' expressions what makes the game entertaining to watch, forming a theory of distinct types of information asymmetry that create suspense for the spectator. One design implication derived from these findings is that, rather than presenting as much information to the spectator as possible, it is more important for the stakeholders to be able to decide how and when they uncover that information.
We developed a Web-based patient empowerment platform that combined acceptance and commitment therapy-based educational modules and tailored coaching sessions with longitudinal tracking of treatments and patient-reported outcomes, named PTSM. Pilot controlled trial results provide preliminary support for its efficacy in improving pain self-efficacy, activity engagement, pain intensity and interference, and satisfaction with pain treatment.
System designers who build customization into games ought to consider how players think about adjustments. The distinctiveness of gaming contexts suggests that closer inspection of customization in games is warranted and will inform the design of customizable game systems. Presented here is an analysis of 82 collected reports about variations to the rules of the poker game Texas Hold'em. A theory of "necessity" in rule adoption is developed and the systematic perspective of rule-changing in games is discussed.
Our article examines a flexible approach to designing general game components inspired by traditional game components. Our goal is to design digital game systems that offer the players greater choice in dictating the rules, pacing, and sociability of a game session-we describe this as supporting socially negotiated gameplay. We introduce five design principles of flexibility: dispensability, live tweakability, tangibility, mobility, and value. Our work demonstrates this approach with the design of an augmented game system composed of playing cards instrumented with near field communication chips and a mobile device with three digital game components: a Card Viewer, a Score Board, and a Turn Keeper. We report on initial user sessions and articulate two emerging challenges for supporting socially negotiated play: (a) solving interaction costs to enable greater flexibility and (b) managing user expectations for the automatic part of a manual-automatic system.
The first time a player sits down with a game is critical for their engagement. Games are a voluntary activity and easy to abandon. If the game cannot hold player attention, it will not matter how much fun the game is later on if the player quits early. Worse, if the initial experience was odious enough, the player will dissuade others from playing. Industry advice is to make the game fun from the start to hook the player. In our analysis of over 200 game reviews and interviews with industry professionals, we advance an alternative, complementary solution. New design terminology is introduced such as "holdouts" (what keeps players playing despite poor game design) and the contrast between momentary fun vs. intriguing experiences. Instead of prioritizing fun, we assert that intrigue and information should be seen as equally valuable for helping players determine if they want to continue playing. The first sustained play session (coined "first hour"), when inspected closely, offers lessons for game development and our understanding of how players evaluate games as consumable products.
Snapping photos or videos on a smartphone makes recording visual memories convenient, but what isn't captured may still be meaningful in retrospect. In this paper, digital mementos are automatically generated for participants using the Rewind system, which assists the recall of location-based minutiae. Rewind is a video-like medium describing people's daily excursions using a sequence of street-level images determined by self-tracked location data. The Rewinds are color-processed to reflect seasonal, time-of-day and weather characteristics. Through two user studies with a combined 40 users, Rewinds were shown to be used as memory artifacts, and are especially meaningful in the many situations when photos or videos are not available. The small cues in Rewinds evoke longer fragments of memory tied to nostalgic routines or significant events, and the sequence of images provide a first-person perspective of remembrance for users. While they are more generic and can possess inaccuracies, Rewinds give people anchors for memories that feel like their own that are used to craft a narrative for that day. Rewind strikes a balance between automatic logging and manually-curated memories by personalizing it in meaningful visuals and consolidating an otherwise overwhelming amount of data.
Players can change the rules of a multi-person game to experience a different gameplay mechanic, add thematic color, or fine-tune its balance. To better understand game variants, we use a grounded approach to analyze 62 variants for Texas Hold'em, a popular card game, and a follow-up case-study of 91 variants of Halo 2, a popular video game. We study their development and examine whether lessons from Texas Hold'em apply to a constrained system such as Halo 2. We discover video gamers' reliance on 'honor rules', rules dependent on the cooperative spirit of its players. We develop a theory of 'necessity' in rule adoption, showing players' sensitivity to the impact of one change on the whole game. In solving game-design problems, adjustments drawn from a set of 'canned' rule changes address common problems with familiar solutions. We find a complex interplay between who can play and what rules are chosen. Our findings have implications for game designers and for non-game variants.
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