Engagement in Digital Games

Cairns, Paul

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27446-1_4

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(76 reference statements)

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“…Engagement is a fundamental construct in the psychology of motivation and digital game play [7,41]. Broadly, it captures the degree and quality of a person's involvement in a task, i.e.…”

Section: Background 21 Engagement and Difficulty Balancingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engagement effects of player rating system-based matchmaking for level ordering in human computation games

Sarkar

Williams

Deterding

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

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Human computation games lack established ways of balancing the difficulty of tasks or levels served to players, potentially contributing to their low engagement rates. Traditional player rating systems have been suggested as a potential solution: using them to rate both players and tasks could estimate player skill and task difficulty and fuel player-task matchmaking. However, neither the effect of difficulty balancing on engagement in human computation games nor the use of player rating systems for this purpose has been empirically tested. We therefore examined the engagement effects of using the Glicko-2 player rating system to order tasks in the human computation game Paradox. An online experiment (n=294) found that both matchmaking-based and pure difficulty-based ordering of tasks led to significantly more attempted and completed levels than random ordering. Additionally, both matchmaking and random ordering led to significantly more difficult tasks being completed than pure difficulty-based ordering. We conclude that poor balancing contributes to poor engagement in human computation games, and that player rating system-based difficulty rating may be a viable and efficient way of improving both.

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“…Engagement is a fundamental construct in the psychology of motivation and digital game play [7,41]. Broadly, it captures the degree and quality of a person's involvement in a task, i.e.…”

Section: Background 21 Engagement and Difficulty Balancingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engagement effects of player rating system-based matchmaking for level ordering in human computation games

Sarkar

Williams

Deterding

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

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“…In some sense these are goal experiences. These are the experiences that players are seeking to have when they play games (Cairns, 2016). Felt uncertainty however is not necessarily a goal of play but is more like a foundational experience on which these other experiences are built.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost at the Edge of Uncertainty: Measuring Player Uncertainty in Digital Games

Power

Cairns

Denisova

et al. 2018

International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction

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Uncertainty has previously been identified as an important ingredient of engaging games. Design in games can create different levels of uncertainty in players that they can recognise and describe as being either attributable to external forces, such as chance or hidden information, or internal to their own understanding of what to do in relation to their own goals. While it appears that uncertainty can contribute both positive and negative play experiences, there is little work in trying to operationalise and measure this concept as a component of player experience. Reported in this paper is an analysis of data from over 700 players using modern bi-factor analysis techniques resulting in a 5-factor psychometric scale which captures the broad feelings of players about uncertainty in games. Three of these specific factors appear to point towards a single generic factor of uncertainty that is internal to the players, one captures experiences relating external uncertainty, with the final factor relating to player's experience of exploring the game to resolve uncertainty. In order to further validate the scale, we conducted an experiment with a commercial puzzle game manipulating the duration of play with predicted outcomes on the different specific factors of the scale. Overall the scale shows promise with good statistical reliability and construct validity of the separate factors and so will be a useful tool for further investigating player experiences in digital games.

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“…In typical game engagement or immersion studies e.g. [77,56], a player plays a game for a short but committed period of time, typically a few minutes, after which they rate their engagement with the game using a questionnaire. Similarly, the operational measurement for the process model [10], performed through the UES questionnaire [55], is administered to reflect on a session of engagement.…”

Section: Implications For Theories Of Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A measure of engagement might be seen from how often players think about the game and how often they initiate game activities, whether that is playing it, sharing a photo or talking to others about it. Cairns [77] identified this move of players from not playing into specific instances of play as something that has not been very well captured in research into any game.…”

Section: Implications For Theories Of Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Busy doing nothing? What do players do in idle games?

Cutting

Gundry

Cairns

2019

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

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Idle games-games where waiting for extended periods is an important dynamic-are increasing in popularity. The game Neko Atsume, a mobile game about collecting cats, is an extreme example of this genre where progress can only be achieved when the game is switched off (so-called "progress while gone"). Do such waiting games engage players? To answer this, we conducted a large survey (N=1972) to understand what players are doing when they play Neko Atsume. Players are highly "engaged" in Neko Atsume as they interact with and around the game in four distinct ways: Time spent playing, Direct sociability; Social media sociability and Checking frequency. However, these characteristics of engagement in Neko Atsume do not fit well with existing models of engagement. We propose that, in future studies, game engagement in idle games could be considered as a habit which players acquire and maintain.

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Engagement in Digital Games

Cited by 17 publications

References 59 publications

Engagement effects of player rating system-based matchmaking for level ordering in human computation games

Engagement effects of player rating system-based matchmaking for level ordering in human computation games

Lost at the Edge of Uncertainty: Measuring Player Uncertainty in Digital Games

Busy doing nothing? What do players do in idle games?

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